{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_32547/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_32547","id":"gutenberg_32547","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32547","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Experience","Philosophy","Pragmatism"],"text":"E-text prepared by Brian Foley, Christine D., and the Project Gutenberg\nOnline Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n A carat character (^) indicates that the following letter\n is superscripted.\n\n A list of changes to the text is at the end of the e-book.\n\n\n\n\n\nESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM\n\nby\n\nWILLIAM JAMES\n\n\n+----------------------------------------------------------------------+\n| By William James |\n| |\n| THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A STUDY IN |\n| HUMAN NATURE. Gifford Lectures delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. |\n| 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, |\n| Green & Co. 1902. |\n| |\n| PRAGMATISM: A NEW NAME FOR SOME OLD WAYS OF THINKING: |\n| POPULAR LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, |\n| London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1907. |\n| |\n| THE MEANING OF TRUTH: A SEQUEL TO \"PRAGMATISM.\" 8vo. |\n| New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. |\n| 1909. |\n| |\n| A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE: HIBBERT LECTURES ON THE |\n| PRESENT SITUATION IN PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, London, |\n| Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1909. |\n| |\n| SOME PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY: A BEGINNING OF AN INTRODUCTION |\n| TO PHILOSOPHY. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, |\n| and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911. |\n| |\n| ESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, |\n| and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1912. |\n| |\n| THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYS IN POPULAR |\n| PHILOSOPHY. 12mo. New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: |\n| Longmans, Green & Co. 1897. |\n| |\n| MEMORIES AND STUDIES. 8vo. New York, London, Bombay, and |\n| Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1911. |\n| |\n| THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols., 8vo. New York: |\n| Henry Holt & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1890. |\n| |\n| PSYCHOLOGY: BRIEFER COURSE. 12mo. New York: Henry Holt |\n| & Co. London: Macmillan & Co. 1892. |\n| |\n| TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO STUDENTS |\n| ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS. 12mo. New York: Henry Holt |\n| & Co. London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Longmans, Green & Co. 1899. |\n| |\n| HUMAN IMMORTALITY: TWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS TO THE |\n| DOCTRINE. 16mo. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. London: Archibald |\n| Constable & Co. 1898. |\n| |\n| THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES. Edited, with an |\n| Introduction, by William James. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Boston: |\n| Houghton Mifflin Co. 1885. |\n| |\n+----------------------------------------------------------------------+\n\n\nESSAYS IN RADICAL EMPIRICISM\n\nby\n\nWILLIAM JAMES\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration]\n\nLongmans, Green, and Co\nFourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York\nLondon, Bombay and Calcutta\n1912\n\nCopyright, 1912, by Henry James Jr.\nAll Rights Reserved\n\n\n\n\nEDITOR'S PREFACE\n\n\nThe present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James\nis known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he\ncollected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title\n'Essays in Radical Empiricism'; and he also had duplicate sets of these\nreprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of\nstudents in the general Harvard Library, and in the Philosophical\nLibrary in Emerson Hall.\n\nTwo years later Professor James published _The Meaning of Truth_ and _A\nPluralistic Universe_, and inserted in these volumes several of the\narticles which he had intended to use in the 'Essays in Radical\nEmpiricism.' Whether he would nevertheless have carried out his original\nplan, had he lived, cannot be certainly known. Several facts, however,\nstand out very clearly. In the first place, the articles included in the\noriginal plan but omitted from his later volumes are indispensable to\nthe understanding of his other writings. To these articles he repeatedly\nalludes. Thus, in _The Meaning of Truth_ (p. 127), he says: \"This\nstatement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has not read my\ntwo articles 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure\nExperience.'\" Other allusions have been indicated in the present text.\nIn the second place, the articles originally brought together as 'Essays\nin Radical Empiricism' form a connected whole. Not only were most of\nthem written consecutively within a period of two years, but they\ncontain numerous cross-references. In the third place, Professor James\nregarded 'radical empiricism' as an _independent_ doctrine. This he\nasserted expressly: \"Let me say that there is no logical connexion\nbetween pragmatism, as I understand it, and a doctrine which I have\nrecently set forth as 'radical empiricism.' The latter stands on its own\nfeet. One may entirely reject it and still be a pragmatist.\"\n(_Pragmatism_, 1907, Preface, p. ix.) Finally, Professor James came\ntoward the end of his life to regard 'radical empiricism' as more\nfundamental and more important than 'pragmatism.' In the Preface to _The\nMeaning of Truth_ (1909), the author gives the following explanation of\nhis desire to continue, and if possible conclude, the controversy over\npragmatism: \"I am interested in another doctrine in philosophy to which\nI give the name of radical empiricism, and it seems to me that the\nestablishment of the pragmatist theory of truth is a step of first-rate\nimportance in making radical empiricism prevail\" (p. xii).\n\nIn preparing the present volume, the editor has therefore been governed\nby two motives. On the one hand, he has sought to preserve and make\naccessible certain important articles not to be found in Professor\nJames's other books. This is true of Essays I, II, IV, V, VIII, IX, X,\nXI, and XII. On the other hand, he has sought to bring together in one\nvolume a set of essays treating systematically of one independent,\ncoherent, and fundamental doctrine. To this end it has seemed best to\ninclude three essays (III, VI, and VII), which, although included in the\noriginal plan, were afterwards reprinted elsewhere; and one essay, XII,\nnot included in the original plan. Essays III, VI, and VII are\nindispensable to the consecutiveness of the series, and are so\ninterwoven with the rest that it is necessary that the student should\nhave them at hand for ready consultation. Essay XII throws an important\nlight on the author's general 'empiricism,' and forms an important link\nbetween 'radical empiricism' and the author's other doctrines.\n\nIn short, the present volume is designed not as a collection but rather\nas a treatise. It is intended that another volume shall be issued which\nshall contain papers having biographical or historical importance which\nhave not yet been reprinted in book form. The present volume is intended\nnot only for students of Professor James's philosophy, but for students\nof metaphysics and the theory of knowledge. It sets forth systematically\nand within brief compass the doctrine of 'radical empiricism.'\n\nA word more may be in order concerning the general meaning of this\ndoctrine. In the Preface to the _Will to Believe_ (1898), Professor\nJames gives the name \"_radical empiricism_\" to his \"philosophic\nattitude,\" and adds the following explanation: \"I say 'empiricism,'\nbecause it is contented to regard its most assured conclusions\nconcerning matters of fact as hypotheses liable to modification in the\ncourse of future experience; and I say 'radical,' because it treats the\ndoctrine of monism itself as an hypothesis, and, unlike so much of the\nhalfway empiricism that is current under the name of positivism or\nagnosticism or scientific naturalism, it does not dogmatically affirm\nmonism as something with which all experience has got to square\" (pp.\nvii-viii). An 'empiricism' of this description is a \"philosophic\nattitude\" or temper of mind rather than a doctrine, and characterizes\nall of Professor James's writings. It is set forth in Essay XII of the\npresent volume.\n\nIn a narrower sense, 'empiricism' is the method of resorting to\n_particular experiences_ for the solution of philosophical problems.\nRationalists are the men of principles, empiricists the men of facts.\n(_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf. also, _ibid._, p. 44; and\n_Pragmatism_, pp. 9, 51.) Or, \"since principles are universals, and\nfacts are particulars, perhaps the best way of characterizing the two\ntendencies is to say that rationalist thinking proceeds most willingly\nby going from wholes to parts, while empiricist thinking proceeds by\ngoing from parts to wholes.\" (_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 35; cf.\nalso _ibid._, p. 98; and _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 7.) Again,\nempiricism \"remands us to sensation.\" (_Op. cit._, p. 264.) The\n\"empiricist view\" insists that, \"as reality is created temporally day by\nday, concepts ... can never fitly supersede perception.... The deeper\nfeatures of reality are found only in perceptual experience.\" (_Some\nProblems of Philosophy_, pp. 100, 97.) Empiricism in this sense is as\nyet characteristic of Professor James's philosophy _as a whole_. It is\nnot the distinctive and independent doctrine set forth in the present\nbook.\n\nThe only summary of 'radical empiricism' in this last and narrowest\nsense appears in the Preface to _The Meaning of Truth_ (pp. xii-xiii);\nand it must be reprinted here as the key to the text that follows.[1]\n\n\"Radical empiricism consists (1) first of a postulate, (2) next of a\nstatement of fact, (3) and finally of a generalized conclusion.\"\n\n(1) \"The postulate is that _the only things that shall be debatable\namong philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from\nexperience_. (Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum,\nbut they form no part of the material for philosophic debate.)\" This is\n\"the principle of pure experience\" as \"a methodical postulate.\" (Cf.\nbelow, pp. 159, 241.) This postulate corresponds to the notion which the\nauthor repeatedly attributes to Shadworth Hodgson, the notion \"that\nrealities are only what they are 'known as.'\" (_Pragmatism_, p. 50;\n_Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 443; _The Meaning of Truth_, pp.\n43, 118.) In this sense 'radical empiricism' and pragmatism are closely\nallied. Indeed, if pragmatism be defined as the assertion that \"the\nmeaning of any proposition can always be brought down to some particular\nconsequence in our future practical experience, ... the point lying in\nthe fact that the experience must be particular rather than in the fact\nthat it must be active\" (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 210); then pragmatism\nand the above postulate come to the same thing. The present book,\nhowever, consists not so much in the assertion of this postulate as in\nthe _use_ of it. And the method is successful in special applications by\nvirtue of a certain \"statement of fact\" concerning relations.\n\n(2) \"The statement of fact is that _the relations between things,\nconjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct\nparticular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things\nthemselves_.\" (Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 280; _The Will to\nBelieve_, p. 278.) This is the central doctrine of the present book. It\ndistinguishes 'radical empiricism' from the \"ordinary empiricism\" of\nHume, J. S. Mill, etc., with which it is otherwise allied. (Cf. below,\npp. 42-44.) It provides an empirical and relational version of\n'activity,' and so distinguishes the author's voluntarism from a view\nwith which it is easily confused--the view which upholds a pure or\ntranscendent activity. (Cf. below, Essay VI.) It makes it possible to\nescape the vicious disjunctions that have thus far baffled philosophy:\nsuch disjunctions as those between consciousness and physical nature,\nbetween thought and its object, between one mind and another, and\nbetween one 'thing' and another. These disjunctions need not be\n'overcome' by calling in any \"extraneous trans-empirical connective\nsupport\" (_Meaning of Truth_, Preface, p. xiii); they may now be\n_avoided_ by regarding the dualities in question as only _differences of\nempirical relationship among common empirical terms_. The pragmatistic\naccount of 'meaning' and 'truth,' shows only how a vicious disjunction\nbetween 'idea' and 'object' may thus be avoided. The present volume not\nonly presents pragmatism in this light; but adds similar accounts of the\nother dualities mentioned above.\n\nThus while pragmatism and radical empiricism do not differ essentially\nwhen regarded as _methods_, they are independent when regarded as\ndoctrines. For it would be possible to hold the pragmatistic theory of\n'meaning' and 'truth,' without basing it on any fundamental theory of\nrelations, and without extending such a theory of relations to residual\nphilosophical problems; without, in short, holding either to the above\n'statement of fact,' or to the following 'generalized conclusion.'\n\n(3) \"The generalized conclusion is that therefore _the parts of\nexperience hold together from next to next by relations that are\nthemselves parts of experience. The directly apprehended universe needs,\nin short, no extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but\npossesses in its own right a concatenated or continuous structure_.\"\nWhen thus generalized, 'radical empiricism' is not only a theory of\nknowledge comprising pragmatism as a special chapter, but a metaphysic\nas well. It excludes \"the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality\" (Cf.\nbelow, p. 195). It is the author's most rigorous statement of his theory\nthat reality is an \"experience-continuum.\" (_Meaning of Truth_, p. 152;\n_A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. V, VII.) It is that positive and\nconstructive 'empiricism' of which Professor James said: \"Let empiricism\nonce become associated with religion, as hitherto, through some strange\nmisunderstanding, it has been associated with irreligion, and I believe\nthat a new era of religion as well as of philosophy will be ready to\nbegin.\" (_Op. cit._, p. 314; cf. _ibid._, Lect. VIII, _passim_; and _The\nVarieties of Religious Experience_, pp. 515-527.)\n\nThe editor desires to acknowledge his obligations to the periodicals\nfrom which these essays have been reprinted, and to the many friends of\nProfessor James who have rendered valuable advice and assistance in the\npreparation of the present volume.\n\n RALPH BARTON PERRY.\n\n CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS.\n January 8, 1912.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] The use of numerals and italics is introduced by the editor.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n I. DOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST? 1\n\n II. A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE 39\n\n III. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 92\n\n IV. HOW TWO MINDS CAN KNOW ONE THING 123\n\n V. THE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD\n OF PURE EXPERIENCE 137\n\n VI. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 155\n\n VII. THE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM 190\n\n VIII. LA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE 206\n\n IX. IS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC? 234\n\n X. MR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM' 241\n\n XI. HUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE 244\n\n XII. ABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM 266\n\n INDEX 281\n\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nDOES 'CONSCIOUSNESS' EXIST?[2]\n\n\n'Thoughts' and 'things' are names for two sorts of object, which common\nsense will always find contrasted and will always practically oppose to\neach other. Philosophy, reflecting on the contrast, has varied in the\npast in her explanations of it, and may be expected to vary in the\nfuture. At first, 'spirit and matter,' 'soul and body,' stood for a pair\nof equipollent substances quite on a par in weight and interest. But one\nday Kant undermined the soul and brought in the transcendental ego, and\never since then the bipolar relation has been very much off its balance.\nThe transcendental ego seems nowadays in rationalist quarters to stand\nfor everything, in empiricist quarters for almost nothing. In the hands\nof such writers as Schuppe, Rehmke, Natorp, Muensterberg--at any rate in\nhis earlier writings, Schubert-Soldern and others, the spiritual\nprinciple attenuates itself to a thoroughly ghostly condition, being\nonly a name for the fact that the 'content' of experience _is known_. It\nloses personal form and activity--these passing over to the content--and\nbecomes a bare _Bewusstheit_ or _Bewusstsein ueberhaupt_, of which in its\nown right absolutely nothing can be said.\n\nI believe that 'consciousness,' when once it has evaporated to this\nestate of pure diaphaneity, is on the point of disappearing altogether.\nIt is the name of a nonentity, and has no right to a place among first\nprinciples. Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the\nfaint rumor left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of\nphilosophy. During the past year, I have read a number of articles whose\nauthors seemed just on the point of abandoning the notion of\nconsciousness,[3] and substituting for it that of an absolute experience\nnot due to two factors. But they were not quite radical enough, not\nquite daring enough in their negations. For twenty years past I have\nmistrusted 'consciousness' as an entity; for seven or eight years past I\nhave suggested its non-existence to my students, and tried to give them\nits pragmatic equivalent in realities of experience. It seems to me that\nthe hour is ripe for it to be openly and universally discarded.\n\nTo deny plumply that 'consciousness' exists seems so absurd on the face\nof it--for undeniably 'thoughts' do exist--that I fear some readers will\nfollow me no farther. Let me then immediately explain that I mean only\nto deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most\nemphatically that it does stand for a function. There is, I mean, no\naboriginal stuff or quality of being,[4] contrasted with that of which\nmaterial objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made;\nbut there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for\nthe performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That\nfunction is _knowing_. 'Consciousness' is supposed necessary to explain\nthe fact that things not only are, but get reported, are known. Whoever\nblots out the notion of consciousness from his list of first principles\nmust still provide in some way for that function's being carried on.\n\n\nI\n\nMy thesis is that if we start with the supposition that there is only\none primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything\nis composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing\ncan easily be explained as a particular sort of relation towards one\nanother into which portions of pure experience may enter. The relation\nitself is a part of pure experience; one of its 'terms' becomes the\nsubject or bearer of the knowledge, the knower,[5] the other becomes the\nobject known. This will need much explanation before it can be\nunderstood. The best way to get it understood is to contrast it with the\nalternative view; and for that we may take the recentest alternative,\nthat in which the evaporation of the definite soul-substance has\nproceeded as far as it can go without being yet complete. If neo-Kantism\nhas expelled earlier forms of dualism, we shall have expelled all forms\nif we are able to expel neo-Kantism in its turn.\n\nFor the thinkers I call neo-Kantian, the word consciousness to-day does\nno more than signalize the fact that experience is indefeasibly\ndualistic in structure. It means that not subject, not object, but\nobject-plus-subject is the minimum that can actually be. The\nsubject-object distinction meanwhile is entirely different from that\nbetween mind and matter, from that between body and soul. Souls were\ndetachable, had separate destinies; things could happen to them. To\nconsciousness as such nothing can happen, for, timeless itself, it is\nonly a witness of happenings in time, in which it plays no part. It is,\nin a word, but the logical correlative of 'content' in an Experience of\nwhich the peculiarity is that _fact comes to light_ in it, that\n_awareness of content_ takes place. Consciousness as such is entirely\nimpersonal--'self' and its activities belong to the content. To say that\nI am self-conscious, or conscious of putting forth volition, means only\nthat certain contents, for which 'self' and 'effort of will' are the\nnames, are not without witness as they occur.\n\nThus, for these belated drinkers at the Kantian spring, we should have\nto admit consciousness as an 'epistemological' necessity, even if we had\nno direct evidence of its being there.\n\nBut in addition to this, we are supposed by almost every one to have an\nimmediate consciousness of consciousness itself. When the world of outer\nfact ceases to be materially present, and we merely recall it in memory,\nor fancy it, the consciousness is believed to stand out and to be felt\nas a kind of impalpable inner flowing, which, once known in this sort of\nexperience, may equally be detected in presentations of the outer world.\n\"The moment we try to fix our attention upon consciousness and to see\n_what_, distinctly, it is,\" says a recent writer, \"it seems to vanish.\nIt seems as if we had before us a mere emptiness. When we try to\nintrospect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue; the other\nelement is as if it were diaphanous. Yet it _can_ be distinguished, if\nwe look attentively enough, and know that there is something to look\nfor.\"[6] \"Consciousness\" (Bewusstheit), says another philosopher, \"is\ninexplicable and hardly describable, yet all conscious experiences have\nthis in common that what we call their content has this peculiar\nreference to a centre for which 'self' is the name, in virtue of which\nreference alone the content is subjectively given, or appears ... While\nin this way consciousness, or reference to a self, is the only thing\nwhich distinguishes a conscious content from any sort of being that\nmight be there with no one conscious of it, yet this only ground of the\ndistinction defies all closer explanations. The existence of\nconsciousness, although it is the fundamental fact of psychology, can\nindeed be laid down as certain, can be brought out by analysis, but can\nneither be defined nor deduced from anything but itself.\"[7]\n\n'Can be brought out by analysis,' this author says. This supposes that\nthe consciousness is one element, moment, factor--call it what you\nlike--of an experience of essentially dualistic inner constitution, from\nwhich, if you abstract the content, the consciousness will remain\nrevealed to its own eye. Experience, at this rate, would be much like a\npaint of which the world pictures were made. Paint has a dual\nconstitution, involving, as it does, a menstruum[8] (oil, size or what\nnot) and a mass of content in the form of pigment suspended therein. We\ncan get the pure menstruum by letting the pigment settle, and the pure\npigment by pouring off the size or oil. We operate here by physical\nsubtraction; and the usual view is, that by mental subtraction we can\nseparate the two factors of experience in an analogous way--not\nisolating them entirely, but distinguishing them enough to know that\nthey are two.\n\n\nII\n\nNow my contention is exactly the reverse of this. _Experience, I\nbelieve, has no such inner duplicity; and the separation of it into\nconsciousness and content comes, not by way of subtraction, but by way\nof addition_--the addition, to a given concrete piece of it, of other\nsets of experiences, in connection with which severally its use or\nfunction may be of two different kinds. The paint will also serve here\nas an illustration. In a pot in a paint-shop, along with other paints,\nit serves in its entirety as so much saleable matter. Spread on a\ncanvas, with other paints around it, it represents, on the contrary, a\nfeature in a picture and performs a spiritual function. Just so, I\nmaintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one\ncontext of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of\n'consciousness'; while in a different context the same undivided bit of\nexperience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective 'content.'\nIn a word, in one group it figures as a thought, in another group as a\nthing. And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have\nevery right to speak of it as subjective and objective both at once. The\ndualism connoted by such double-barrelled terms as 'experience,'\n'phenomenon,' 'datum,' '_Vorfindung_'--terms which, in philosophy at any\nrate, tend more and more to replace the single-barrelled terms of\n'thought' and 'thing'--that dualism, I say, is still preserved in this\naccount, but reinterpreted, so that, instead of being mysterious and\nelusive, it becomes verifiable and concrete. It is an affair of\nrelations, it falls outside, not inside, the single experience\nconsidered, and can always be particularized and defined.\n\nThe entering wedge for this more concrete way of understanding the\ndualism was fashioned by Locke when he made the word 'idea' stand\nindifferently for thing and thought, and by Berkeley when he said that\nwhat common sense means by realities is exactly what the philosopher\nmeans by ideas. Neither Locke nor Berkeley thought his truth out into\nperfect clearness, but it seems to me that the conception I am defending\ndoes little more than consistently carry out the 'pragmatic' method\nwhich they were the first to use.\n\nIf the reader will take his own experiences, he will see what I mean.\nLet him begin with a perceptual experience, the 'presentation,' so\ncalled, of a physical object, his actual field of vision, the room he\nsits in, with the book he is reading as its centre; and let him for the\npresent treat this complex object in the common-sense way as being\n'really' what it seems to be, namely, a collection of physical things\ncut out from an environing world of other physical things with which\nthese physical things have actual or potential relations. Now at the\nsame time it is just _those self-same things_ which his mind, as we say,\nperceives; and the whole philosophy of perception from Democritus's time\ndownwards has been just one long wrangle over the paradox that what is\nevidently one reality should be in two places at once, both in outer\nspace and in a person's mind. 'Representative' theories of perception\navoid the logical paradox, but on the other hand they violate the\nreader's sense of life, which knows no intervening mental image but\nseems to see the room and the book immediately just as they physically\nexist.\n\nThe puzzle of how the one identical room can be in two places is at\nbottom just the puzzle of how one identical point can be on two lines.\nIt can, if it be situated at their intersection; and similarly, if the\n'pure experience' of the room were a place of intersection of two\nprocesses, which connected it with different groups of associates\nrespectively, it could be counted twice over, as belonging to either\ngroup, and spoken of loosely as existing in two places, although it\nwould remain all the time a numerically single thing.\n\nWell, the experience is a member of diverse processes that can be\nfollowed away from it along entirely different lines. The one\nself-identical thing has so many relations to the rest of experience\nthat you can take it in disparate systems of association, and treat it\nas belonging with opposite contexts.[9] In one of these contexts it is\nyour 'field of consciousness'; in another it is 'the room in which you\nsit,' and it enters both contexts in its wholeness, giving no pretext\nfor being said to attach itself to consciousness by one of its parts or\naspects, and to outer reality by another. What are the two processes,\nnow, into which the room-experience simultaneously enters in this way?\n\nOne of them is the reader's personal biography, the other is the history\nof the house of which the room is part. The presentation, the\nexperience, the _that_ in short (for until we have decided _what_ it is\nit must be a mere _that_) is the last term of a train of sensations,\nemotions, decisions, movements, classifications, expectations, etc.,\nending in the present, and the first term of a series of similar 'inner'\noperations extending into the future, on the reader's part. On the other\nhand, the very same _that_ is the _terminus ad quem_ of a lot of\nprevious physical operations, carpentering, papering, furnishing,\nwarming, etc., and the _terminus a quo_ of a lot of future ones, in\nwhich it will be concerned when undergoing the destiny of a physical\nroom. The physical and the mental operations form curiously incompatible\ngroups. As a room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that\nenvironment for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may\nnever have existed until now. As a room, attention will go on to\ndiscover endless new details in it. As your mental state merely, few new\nones will emerge under attention's eye. As a room, it will take an\nearthquake, or a gang of men, and in any case a certain amount of time,\nto destroy it. As your subjective state, the closing of your eyes, or\nany instantaneous play of your fancy will suffice. In the real world,\nfire will consume it. In your mind, you can let fire play over it\nwithout effect. As an outer object, you must pay so much a month to\ninhabit it. As an inner content, you may occupy it for any length of\ntime rent-free. If, in short, you follow it in the mental direction,\ntaking it along with events of personal biography solely, all sorts of\nthings are true of it which are false, and false of it which are true if\nyou treat it as a real thing experienced, follow it in the physical\ndirection, and relate it to associates in the outer world.\n\n\nIII\n\nSo far, all seems plain sailing, but my thesis will probably grow less\nplausible to the reader when I pass from percepts to concepts, or from\nthe case of things presented to that of things remote. I believe,\nnevertheless, that here also the same law holds good. If we take\nconceptual manifolds, or memories, or fancies, they also are in their\nfirst intention mere bits of pure experience, and, as such, are single\n_thats_ which act in one context as objects, and in another context\nfigure as mental states. By taking them in their first intention, I mean\nignoring their relation to possible perceptual experiences with which\nthey may be connected, which they may lead to and terminate in, and\nwhich then they may be supposed to 'represent.' Taking them in this way\nfirst, we confine the problem to a world merely 'thought-of' and not\ndirectly felt or seen.[10] This world, just like the world of percepts,\ncomes to us at first as a chaos of experiences, but lines of order soon\nget traced. We find that any bit of it which we may cut out as an\nexample is connected with distinct groups of associates, just as our\nperceptual experiences are, that these associates link themselves with\nit by different relations,[11] and that one forms the inner history of a\nperson, while the other acts as an impersonal 'objective' world, either\nspatial and temporal, or else merely logical or mathematical, or\notherwise 'ideal.'\n\nThe first obstacle on the part of the reader to seeing that these\nnon-perceptual experiences have objectivity as well as subjectivity will\nprobably be due to the intrusion into his mind of _percepts_, that third\ngroup of associates with which the non-perceptual experiences have\nrelations, and which, as a whole, they 'represent,' standing to them as\nthoughts to things. This important function of the non-perceptual\nexperiences complicates the question and confuses it; for, so used are\nwe to treat percepts as the sole genuine realities that, unless we keep\nthem out of the discussion, we tend altogether to overlook the\nobjectivity that lies in non-perceptual experiences by themselves. We\ntreat them, 'knowing' percepts as they do, as through and through\nsubjective, and say that they are wholly constituted of the stuff called\nconsciousness, using this term now for a kind of entity, after the\nfashion which I am seeking to refute.[12]\n\nAbstracting, then, from percepts altogether, what I maintain is, that\nany single non-perceptual experience tends to get counted twice over,\njust as a perceptual experience does, figuring in one context as an\nobject or field of objects, in another as a state of mind: and all this\nwithout the least internal self-diremption on its own part into\nconsciousness and content. It is all consciousness in one taking; and,\nin the other, all content.\n\nI find this objectivity of non-perceptual experiences, this complete\nparallelism in point of reality between the presently felt and the\nremotely thought, so well set forth in a page of Muensterberg's\n_Grundzuege_, that I will quote it as it stands.\n\n\"I may only think of my objects,\" says Professor Muensterberg; \"yet, in\nmy living thought they stand before me exactly as perceived objects\nwould do, no matter how different the two ways of apprehending them may\nbe in their genesis. The book here lying on the table before me, and the\nbook in the next room of which I think and which I mean to get, are both\nin the same sense given realities for me, realities which I acknowledge\nand of which I take account. If you agree that the perceptual object is\nnot an idea within me, but that percept and thing, as indistinguishably\none, are really experienced _there, outside_, you ought not to believe\nthat the merely thought-of object is hid away inside of the thinking\nsubject. The object of which I think, and of whose existence I take\ncognizance without letting it now work upon my senses, occupies its\ndefinite place in the outer world as much as does the object which I\ndirectly see.\"\n\n\"What is true of the here and the there, is also true of the now and the\nthen. I know of the thing which is present and perceived, but I know\nalso of the thing which yesterday was but is no more, and which I only\nremember. Both can determine my present conduct, both are parts of the\nreality of which I keep account. It is true that of much of the past I\nam uncertain, just as I am uncertain of much of what is present if it be\nbut dimly perceived. But the interval of time does not in principle\nalter my relation to the object, does not transform it from an object\nknown into a mental state.... The things in the room here which I\nsurvey, and those in my distant home of which I think, the things of\nthis minute and those of my long-vanished boyhood, influence and decide\nme alike, with a reality which my experience of them directly feels.\nThey both make up my real world, they make it directly, they do not have\nfirst to be introduced to me and mediated by ideas which now and here\narise within me.... This not-me character of my recollections and\nexpectations does not imply that the external objects of which I am\naware in those experiences should necessarily be there also for others.\nThe objects of dreamers and hallucinated persons are wholly without\ngeneral validity. But even were they centaurs and golden mountains, they\nstill would be 'off there,' in fairy land, and not 'inside' of\nourselves.\"[13]\n\nThis certainly is the immediate, primary, naif, or practical way of\ntaking our thought-of world. Were there no perceptual world to serve as\nits 'reductive,' in Taine's sense, by being 'stronger' and more\ngenuinely 'outer' (so that the whole merely thought-of world seems weak\nand inner in comparison), our world of thought would be the only world,\nand would enjoy complete reality in our belief. This actually happens in\nour dreams, and in our day-dreams so long as percepts do not interrupt\nthem.\n\nAnd yet, just as the seen room (to go back to our late example) is\n_also_ a field of consciousness, so the conceived or recollected room is\n_also_ a state of mind; and the doubling-up of the experience has in\nboth cases similar grounds.\n\nThe room thought-of, namely, has many thought-of couplings with many\nthought-of things. Some of these couplings are inconstant, others are\nstable. In the reader's personal history the room occupies a single\ndate--he saw it only once perhaps, a year ago. Of the house's history,\non the other hand, it forms a permanent ingredient. Some couplings\nhave the curious stubbornness, to borrow Royce's term, of fact; others\nshow the fluidity of fancy--we let them come and go as we please.\nGrouped with the rest of its house, with the name of its town, of its\nowner, builder, value, decorative plan, the room maintains a definite\nfoothold, to which, if we try to loosen it, it tends to return, and to\nreassert itself with force.[14] With these associates, in a word, it\ncoheres, while to other houses, other towns, other owners, etc., it\nshows no tendency to cohere at all. The two collections, first of its\ncohesive, and, second, of its loose associates, inevitably come to be\ncontrasted. We call the first collection the system of external\nrealities, in the midst of which the room, as 'real,' exists; the\nother we call the stream of our internal thinking, in which, as a\n'mental image,' it for a moment floats.[15] The room thus again gets\ncounted twice over. It plays two different roles, being _Gedanke_ and\n_Gedachtes_, the thought-of-an-object, and the object-thought-of, both\nin one; and all this without paradox or mystery, just as the same\nmaterial thing may be both low and high, or small and great, or bad\nand good, because of its relations to opposite parts of an environing\nworld.\n\nAs 'subjective' we say that the experience represents; as 'objective'\nit is represented. What represents and what is represented is here\nnumerically the same; but we must remember that no dualism of being\nrepresented and representing resides in the experience _per se_. In its\npure state, or when isolated, there is no self-splitting of it into\nconsciousness and what the consciousness is 'of.' Its subjectivity and\nobjectivity are functional attributes solely, realized only when the\nexperience is 'taken,' _i.e._, talked-of, twice, considered along with\nits two differing contexts respectively, by a new retrospective\nexperience, of which that whole past complication now forms the fresh\ncontent.\n\nThe instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure'\nexperience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject\nas yet. For the time being, it is plain, unqualified actuality, or\nexistence, a simple _that_. In this _naif_ immediacy it is of course\n_valid_; it is _there_, we _act_ upon it; and the doubling of it in\nretrospection into a state of mind and a reality intended thereby, is\njust one of the acts. The 'state of mind,' first treated explicitly as\nsuch in retrospection, will stand corrected or confirmed, and the\nretrospective experience in its turn will get a similar treatment; but\nthe immediate experience in its passing is always 'truth,'[16] practical\ntruth, _something to act on_, at its own movement. If the world were\nthen and there to go out like a candle, it would remain truth absolute\nand objective, for it would be 'the last word,' would have no critic,\nand no one would ever oppose the thought in it to the reality\nintended.[17]\n\nI think I may now claim to have made my thesis clear. Consciousness\nconnotes a kind of external relation, and does not denote a special\nstuff or way of being. _The peculiarity of our experiences, that they\nnot only are, but are known, which their 'conscious' quality is invoked\nto explain, is better explained by their relations--these relations\nthemselves being experiences--to one another._\n\n\nIV\n\nWere I now to go on to treat of the knowing of perceptual by conceptual\nexperiences, it would again prove to be an affair of external relations.\nOne experience would be the knower, the other the reality known; and I\ncould perfectly well define, without the notion of 'consciousness,' what\nthe knowing actually and practically amounts to--leading-towards,\nnamely, and terminating-in percepts, through a series of transitional\nexperiences which the world supplies. But I will not treat of this,\nspace being insufficient.[18] I will rather consider a few objections\nthat are sure to be urged against the entire theory as it stands.\n\n\nV\n\nFirst of all, this will be asked: \"If experience has not 'conscious'\nexistence, if it be not partly made of 'consciousness,' of what then is\nit made? Matter we know, and thought we know, and conscious content we\nknow, but neutral and simple 'pure experience' is something we know not\nat all. Say _what_ it consists of--for it must consist of something--or\nbe willing to give it up!\"\n\nTo this challenge the reply is easy. Although for fluency's sake I\nmyself spoke early in this article of a stuff of pure experience, I have\nnow to say that there is no _general_ stuff of which experience at large\nis made. There are as many stuffs as there are 'natures' in the things\nexperienced. If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is made of,\nthe answer is always the same: \"It is made of _that_, of just what\nappears, of space, of intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or\nwhat not.\" Shadworth Hodgson's analysis here leaves nothing to be\ndesired.[19] Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible\nnatures, and save for time and space (and, if you like, for 'being')\nthere appears no universal element of which all things are made.\n\n\nVI\n\nThe next objection is more formidable, in fact it sounds quite crushing\nwhen one hears it first.\n\n\"If it be the self-same piece of pure experience, taken twice over, that\nserves now as thought and now as thing\"--so the objection runs--\"how\ncomes it that its attributes should differ so fundamentally in the two\ntakings. As thing, the experience is extended; as thought, it occupies\nno space or place. As thing, it is red, hard, heavy; but who ever heard\nof a red, hard or heavy thought? Yet even now you said that an\nexperience is made of just what appears, and what appears is just such\nadjectives. How can the one experience in its thing-function be made of\nthem, consist of them, carry them as its own attributes, while in its\nthought-function it disowns them and attributes them elsewhere. There is\na self-contradiction here from which the radical dualism of thought and\nthing is the only truth that can save us. Only if the thought is one\nkind of being can the adjectives exist in it 'intentionally' (to use the\nscholastic term); only if the thing is another kind, can they exist in\nit constitutively and energetically. No simple subject can take the same\nadjectives and at one time be qualified by it, and at another time be\nmerely 'of' it, as of something only meant or known.\"\n\nThe solution insisted on by this objector, like many other common-sense\nsolutions, grows the less satisfactory the more one turns it in one's\nmind. To begin with, _are_ thought and thing as heterogeneous as is\ncommonly said?\n\nNo one denies that they have some categories in common. Their relations\nto time are identical. Both, moreover, may have parts (for psychologists\nin general treat thoughts as having them); and both may be complex or\nsimple. Both are of kinds, can be compared, added and subtracted and\narranged in serial orders. All sorts of adjectives qualify our thoughts\nwhich appear incompatible with consciousness, being as such a bare\ndiaphaneity. For instance, they are natural and easy, or laborious. They\nare beautiful, happy, intense, interesting, wise, idiotic, focal,\nmarginal, insipid, confused, vague, precise, rational, casual, general,\nparticular, and many things besides. Moreover, the chapters on\n'Perception' in the psychology-books are full of facts that make for the\nessential homogeneity of thought with thing. How, if 'subject' and\n'object' were separated 'by the whole diameter of being,' and had no\nattributes in common, could it be so hard to tell, in a presented and\nrecognized material object, what part comes in through the sense-organs\nand what part comes 'out of one's own head'? Sensations and\napperceptive ideas fuse here so intimately that you can no more tell\nwhere one begins and the other ends, than you can tell, in those cunning\ncircular panoramas that have lately been exhibited, where the real\nforeground and the painted canvas join together.[20]\n\nDescartes for the first time defined thought as the absolutely\nunextended, and later philosophers have accepted the description as\ncorrect. But what possible meaning has it to say that, when we think of\na foot-rule or a square yard, extension is not attributable to our\nthought? Of every extended object the _adequate_ mental picture must\nhave all the extension of the object itself. The difference between\nobjective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context\nsolely. In the mind the various extents maintain no necessarily stubborn\norder relatively to each other, while in the physical world they bound\neach other stably, and, added together, make the great enveloping Unit\nwhich we believe in and call real Space. As 'outer,' they carry\nthemselves adversely, so to speak, to one another, exclude one another\nand maintain their distances; while, as 'inner,' their order is loose,\nand they form a _durcheinander_ in which unity is lost.[21] But to argue\nfrom this that inner experience is absolutely inextensive seems to me\nlittle short of absurd. The two worlds differ, not by the presence or\nabsence of extension, but by the relations of the extensions which in\nboth worlds exist.\n\nDoes not this case of extension now put us on the track of truth in the\ncase of other qualities? It does; and I am surprised that the facts\nshould not have been noticed long ago. Why, for example, do we call a\nfire hot, and water wet, and yet refuse to say that our mental state,\nwhen it is 'of' these objects, is either wet or hot? 'Intentionally,' at\nany rate, and when the mental state is a vivid image, hotness and\nwetness are in it just as much as they are in the physical experience.\nThe reason is this, that, as the general chaos of all our experiences\ngets sifted, we find that there are some fires that will always burn\nsticks and always warm our bodies, and that there are some waters that\nwill always put out fires; while there are other fires and waters that\nwill not act at all. The general group of experiences that _act_, that\ndo not only possess their natures intrinsically, but wear them\nadjectively and energetically, turning them against one another, comes\ninevitably to be contrasted with the group whose members, having\nidentically the same natures, fail to manifest them in the 'energetic'\nway.[22] I make for myself now an experience of blazing fire; I place it\nnear my body; but it does not warm me in the least. I lay a stick upon\nit, and the stick either burns or remains green, as I please. I call up\nwater, and pour it on the fire, and absolutely no difference ensues. I\naccount for all such facts by calling this whole train of experiences\nunreal, a mental train. Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks;\nmental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out\neven a mental fire. Mental knives may be sharp, but they won't cut real\nwood. Mental triangles are pointed, but their points won't wound. With\n'real' objects, on the contrary, consequences always accrue; and thus\nthe real experiences get sifted from the mental ones, the things from\nour thoughts of them, fanciful or true, and precipitated together as the\nstable part of the whole experience-chaos, under the name of the\nphysical world. Of this our perceptual experiences are the nucleus, they\nbeing the originally strong experiences. We add a lot of conceptual\nexperiences to them, making these strong also in imagination, and\nbuilding out the remoter parts of the physical world by their means; and\naround this core of reality the world of laxly connected fancies and\nmere rhapsodical objects floats like a bank of clouds. In the clouds,\nall sorts of rules are violated which in the core are kept. Extensions\nthere can be indefinitely located; motion there obeys no Newton's laws.\n\n\nVII\n\nThere is a peculiar class of experiences to which, whether we take them\nas subjective or as objective, we _assign_ their several natures as\nattributes, because in both contexts they affect their associates\nactively, though in neither quite as 'strongly' or as sharply as things\naffect one another by their physical energies. I refer here to\n_appreciations_, which form an ambiguous sphere of being, belonging with\nemotion on the one hand, and having objective 'value' on the other, yet\nseeming not quite inner nor quite outer, as if a diremption had begun\nbut had not made itself complete.[23]\n\nExperiences of painful objects, for example, are usually also painful\nexperiences; perceptions of loveliness, of ugliness, tend to pass muster\nas lovely or as ugly perceptions; intuitions of the morally lofty are\nlofty intuitions. Sometimes the adjective wanders as if uncertain where\nto fix itself. Shall we speak of seductive visions or of visions of\nseductive things? Of wicked desires or of desires for wickedness? Of\nhealthy thoughts or of thoughts of healthy objects? Of good impulses, or\nof impulses towards the good? Of feelings of anger, or of angry\nfeelings? Both in the mind and in the thing, these natures modify their\ncontext, exclude certain associates and determine others, have their\nmates and incompatibles. Yet not as stubbornly as in the case of\nphysical qualities, for beauty and ugliness, love and hatred, pleasant\nand painful can, in certain complex experiences, coexist.\n\nIf one were to make an evolutionary construction of how a lot of\noriginally chaotic pure experiences became gradually differentiated into\nan orderly inner and outer world, the whole theory would turn upon one's\nsuccess in explaining how or why the quality of an experience, once\nactive, could become less so, and, from being an energetic attribute in\nsome cases, elsewhere lapse into the status of an inert or merely\ninternal 'nature.' This would be the 'evolution' of the psychical from\nthe bosom of the physical, in which the esthetic, moral and otherwise\nemotional experiences would represent a halfway stage.\n\n\nVIII\n\nBut a last cry of _non possumus_ will probably go up from many readers.\n\"All very pretty as a piece of ingenuity,\" they will say, \"but our\nconsciousness itself intuitively contradicts you. We, for our part,\n_know_ that we are conscious. We _feel_ our thought, flowing as a life\nwithin us, in absolute contrast with the objects which it so\nunremittingly escorts. We can not be faithless to this immediate\nintuition. The dualism is a fundamental _datum_: Let no man join what\nGod has put asunder.\"\n\nMy reply to this is my last word, and I greatly grieve that to many it\nwill sound materialistic. I can not help that, however, for I, too, have\nmy intuitions and I must obey them. Let the case be what it may in\nothers, I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the\nstream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a phenomenon) is\nonly a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to\nconsist chiefly of the stream of my breathing. The 'I think' which Kant\nsaid must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which\nactually does accompany them. There are other internal facts besides\nbreathing (intracephalic muscular adjustments, etc., of which I have\nsaid a word in my larger Psychology), and these increase the assets of\n'consciousness,' so far as the latter is subject to immediate\nperception;[24] but breath, which was ever the original of 'spirit,'\nbreath moving outwards, between the glottis and the nostrils, is, I am\npersuaded, the essence out of which philosophers have constructed the\nentity known to them as consciousness. _That entity is fictitious, while\nthoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in the concrete\nare made of the same stuff as things are._\n\nI wish I might believe myself to have made that plausible in this\narticle. In another article I shall try to make the general notion of a\nworld composed of pure experiences still more clear.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[2] [Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. I, No. 18, September 1, 1904. For the relation\nbetween this essay and those which follow, cf. below, pp. 53-54. ED.]\n\n[3] Articles by Baldwin, Ward, Bawden, King, Alexander and others. Dr.\nPerry is frankly over the border.\n\n[4] [Similarly, there is no \"activity of 'consciousness' as such.\" See\nbelow, pp. 170 ff., note. ED.]\n\n[5] In my _Psychology_ I have tried to show that we need no knower other\nthan the 'passing thought.' [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 338\nff.]\n\n[6] G. E. Moore: _Mind_, vol. XII, N. S., [1903], p. 450.\n\n[7] Paul Natorp: _Einleitung in die Psychologie_, 1888, pp. 14, 112.\n\n[8] \"Figuratively speaking, consciousness may be said to be the one\nuniversal solvent, or menstruum, in which the different concrete kinds\nof psychic acts and facts are contained, whether in concealed or in\nobvious form.\" G. T. Ladd: _Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory_,\n1894, p. 30.\n\n[9] [For a parallel statement of this view, cf. the author's _Meaning of\nTruth_, p. 49, note. Cf. also below, pp. 196-197. ED.]\n\n[10] [For the author's recognition of \"concepts as a co-ordinate realm\"\nof reality, cf. his _Meaning of Truth_, pp. 42, 195, note; _A\nPluralistic Universe_, pp. 339-340; _Some Problems of Philosophy_, pp.\n50-57, 67-70; and below, p. 16, note. Giving this view the name 'logical\nrealism,' he remarks elsewhere that his philosophy \"may be regarded as\nsomewhat eccentric in its attempt to combine logical realism with an\notherwise empiricist mode of thought\" (_Some Problems of Philosophy_, p.\n106). ED.]\n\n[11] Here as elsewhere the relations are of course _experienced_\nrelations, members of the same originally chaotic manifold of\nnon-perceptual experience of which the related terms themselves are\nparts. [Cf. below, p. 42.]\n\n[12] Of the representative function of non-perceptual experience as a\nwhole, I will say a word in a subsequent article: it leads too far into\nthe general theory of knowledge for much to be said about it in a short\npaper like this. [Cf. below, pp. 52 ff.]\n\n[13] Muensterberg: _Grundzuege der Psychologie_, vol. I, p. 48.\n\n[14] Cf. A. L. Hodder: _The Adversaries of the Sceptic_, pp. 94-99.\n\n[15] For simplicity's sake I confine my exposition to 'external'\nreality. But there is also the system of ideal reality in which the room\nplays its part. Relations of comparison, of classification, serial\norder, value, also are stubborn, assign a definite place to the room,\nunlike the incoherence of its places in the mere rhapsody of our\nsuccessive thoughts. [Cf. above, p. 16.]\n\n[16] Note the ambiguity of this term, which is taken sometimes\nobjectively and sometimes subjectively.\n\n[17] In the _Psychological Review_ for July [1904], Dr. R. B. Perry has\npublished a view of Consciousness which comes nearer to mine than any\nother with which I am acquainted. At present, Dr. Perry thinks, every\nfield of experience is so much 'fact.' It becomes 'opinion' or 'thought'\nonly in retrospection, when a fresh experience, thinking the same\nobject, alters and corrects it. But the corrective experience becomes\nitself in turn corrected, and thus experience as a whole is a process in\nwhich what is objective originally forever turns subjective, turns into\nour apprehension of the object. I strongly recommend Dr. Perry's\nadmirable article to my readers.\n\n[18] I have given a partial account of the matter in _Mind_, vol. X, p.\n27, 1885 [reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 1-42], and in the\n_Psychological Review_, vol. II, p. 105, 1895 [partly reprinted in _The\nMeaning of Truth_, pp. 43-50]. See also C. A. Strong's article in the\n_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. I, p.\n253, May 12, 1904. I hope myself very soon to recur to the matter. [See\nbelow, pp. 52 ff.]\n\n[19] [Cf. Shadworth Hodgson: _The Metaphysic of Experience_, vol. I.\n_passim;_ _The Philosophy of Reflection_, bk. II, ch. IV, Sec. 3. ED.]\n\n[20] Spencer's proof of his 'Transfigured Realism' (his doctrine that\nthere is an absolutely non-mental reality) comes to mind as a splendid\ninstance of the impossibility of establishing radical heterogeneity\nbetween thought and thing. All his painfully accumulated points of\ndifference run gradually into their opposites, and are full of\nexceptions. [Cf. Spencer: _Principles of Psychology_, part VII, ch.\nXIX.]\n\n[21] I speak here of the complete inner life in which the mind plays\nfreely with its materials. Of course the mind's free play is restricted\nwhen it seeks to copy real things in real space.\n\n[22] [But there are also \"mental activity trains,\" in which thoughts do\n\"work on each other.\" Cf. below, p. 184, note. ED.]\n\n[23] [This topic is resumed below, pp. 137 ff. ED.]\n\n[24] [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 299-305. Cf. below, pp.\n169-171 (note).]\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nA WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE[25]\n\n\nIt is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic\natmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of\noppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems\nanciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as\nif the one thing sure were the inadequacy of the extant\nschool-solutions. The dissatisfaction with these seems due for the most\npart to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic. Life is\nconfused and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears to\ncrave is more of the temperament of life in its philosophy, even though\nit were at some cost of logical rigor and of formal purity.\nTranscendental idealism is inclining to let the world wag\nincomprehensibly, in spite of its Absolute Subject and his unity of\npurpose. Berkeleyan idealism is abandoning the principle of parsimony\nand dabbling in panpsychic speculations. Empiricism flirts with\nteleology; and, strangest of all, natural realism, so long decently\nburied, raises its head above the turf, and finds glad hands\noutstretched from the most unlikely quarters to help it to its feet\nagain. We are all biased by our personal feelings, I know, and I am\npersonally discontented with extant solutions; so I seem to read the\nsigns of a great unsettlement, as if the upheaval of more real\nconceptions and more fruitful methods were imminent, as if a true\nlandscape might result, less clipped, straight-edged and artificial.\n\nIf philosophy be really on the eve of any considerable rearrangement,\nthe time should be propitious for any one who has suggestions of his own\nto bring forward. For many years past my mind has been growing into a\ncertain type of _Weltanschauung_. Rightly or wrongly, I have got to the\npoint where I can hardly see things in any other pattern. I propose,\ntherefore, to describe the pattern as clearly as I can consistently with\ngreat brevity, and to throw my description into the bubbling vat of\npublicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will\neventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall\nit, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment\nof new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization.\n\n\nI. RADICAL EMPIRICISM\n\nI give the name of 'radical empiricism' to my _Weltanschauung_.\nEmpiricism is known as the opposite of rationalism. Rationalism tends to\nemphasize universals and to make wholes prior to parts in the order of\nlogic as well as in that of being. Empiricism, on the contrary, lays the\nexplanatory stress upon the part, the element, the individual, and\ntreats the whole as a collection and the universal as an abstraction. My\ndescription of things, accordingly, starts with the parts and makes of\nthe whole a being of the second order. It is essentially a mosaic\nphilosophy, a philosophy of plural facts, like that of Hume and his\ndescendants, who refer these facts neither to Substances in which they\ninhere nor to an Absolute Mind that creates them as its objects. But it\ndiffers from the Humian type of empiricism in one particular which makes\nme add the epithet radical.\n\nTo be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions\nany element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any\nelement that is directly experienced. For such a philosophy, _the\nrelations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced\nrelations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as\n'real' as anything else in the system_. Elements may indeed be\nredistributed, the original placing of things getting corrected, but a\nreal place must be found for every kind of thing experienced, whether\nterm or relation, in the final philosophic arrangement.\n\nNow, ordinary empiricism, in spite of the fact that conjunctive and\ndisjunctive relations present themselves as being fully co-ordinate\nparts of experience, has always shown a tendency to do away with the\nconnections of things, and to insist most on the disjunctions.\nBerkeley's nominalism, Hume's statement that whatever things we\ndistinguish are as 'loose and separate' as if they had 'no manner of\nconnection,' James Mill's denial that similars have anything 'really' in\ncommon, the resolution of the causal tie into habitual sequence, John\nMill's account of both physical things and selves as composed of\ndiscontinuous possibilities, and the general pulverization of all\nExperience by association and the mind-dust theory, are examples of what\nI mean.[26]\n\nThe natural result of such a world-picture has been the efforts of\nrationalism to correct its incoherencies by the addition of\ntrans-experiential agents of unification, substances, intellectual\ncategories and powers, or Selves; whereas, if empiricism had only been\nradical and taken everything that comes without disfavor, conjunction as\nwell as separation, each at its face value, the results would have\ncalled for no such artificial correction. _Radical empiricism_, as I\nunderstand it, _does full justice to conjunctive relations_, without,\nhowever, treating them as rationalism always tends to treat them, as\nbeing true in some supernal way, as if the unity of things and their\nvariety belonged to different orders of truth and vitality altogether.\n\n\nII. CONJUNCTIVE RELATIONS\n\nRelations are of different degrees of intimacy. Merely to be 'with' one\nanother in a universe of discourse is the most external relation that\nterms can have, and seems to involve nothing whatever as to farther\nconsequences. Simultaneity and time-interval come next, and then\nspace-adjacency and distance. After them, similarity and difference,\ncarrying the possibility of many inferences. Then relations of activity,\ntying terms into series involving change, tendency, resistance, and the\ncausal order generally. Finally, the relation experienced between terms\nthat form states of mind, and are immediately conscious of continuing\neach other. The organization of the Self as a system of memories,\npurposes, strivings, fulfilments or disappointments, is incidental to\nthis most intimate of all relations, the terms of which seem in many\ncases actually to compenetrate and suffuse each other's being.[27]\n\nPhilosophy has always turned on grammatical particles. With, near, next,\nlike, from, towards, against, because, for, through, my--these words\ndesignate types of conjunctive relation arranged in a roughly ascending\norder of intimacy and inclusiveness. _A priori_, we can imagine a\nuniverse of withness but no nextness; or one of nextness but no\nlikeness, or of likeness with no activity, or of activity with no\npurpose, or of purpose with no ego. These would be universes, each with\nits own grade of unity. The universe of human experience is, by one or\nanother of its parts, of each and all these grades. Whether or not it\npossibly enjoys some still more absolute grade of union does not appear\nupon the surface.\n\nTaken as it does appear, our universe is to a large extent chaotic. No\none single type of connection runs through all the experiences that\ncompose it. If we take space-relations, they fail to connect minds into\nany regular system. Causes and purposes obtain only among special series\nof facts. The self-relation seems extremely limited and does not link\ntwo different selves together. _Prima facie_, if you should liken the\nuniverse of absolute idealism to an aquarium, a crystal globe in which\ngoldfish are swimming, you would have to compare the empiricist universe\nto something more like one of those dried human heads with which the\nDyaks of Borneo deck their lodges. The skull forms a solid nucleus; but\ninnumerable feathers, leaves, strings, beads, and loose appendices of\nevery description float and dangle from it, and, save that they\nterminate in it, seem to have nothing to do with one another. Even so my\nexperiences and yours float and dangle, terminating, it is true, in a\nnucleus of common perception, but for the most part out of sight and\nirrelevant and unimaginable to one another. This imperfect intimacy,\nthis bare relation of _withness_ between some parts of the sum total of\nexperience and other parts, is the fact that ordinary empiricism\nover-emphasizes against rationalism, the latter always tending to ignore\nit unduly. Radical empiricism, on the contrary, is fair to both the\nunity and the disconnection. It finds no reason for treating either as\nillusory. It allots to each its definite sphere of description, and\nagrees that there appear to be actual forces at work which tend, as time\ngoes on, to make the unity greater.\n\nThe conjunctive relation that has given most trouble to philosophy is\nthe _co-conscious transition_, so to call it, by which one experience\npasses into another when both belong to the same self. About the facts\nthere is no question. My experiences and your experiences are 'with'\neach other in various external ways, but mine pass into mine, and yours\npass into yours in a way in which yours and mine never pass into one\nanother. Within each of our personal histories, subject, object,\ninterest and purpose _are continuous or may be continuous_.[28] Personal\nhistories are processes of change in time, and _the change itself is one\nof the things immediately experienced_. 'Change' in this case means\ncontinuous as opposed to discontinuous transition. But continuous\ntransition is one sort of a conjunctive relation; and to be a radical\nempiricist means to hold fast to this conjunctive relation of all\nothers, for this is the strategic point, the position through which, if\na hole be made, all the corruptions of dialectics and all the\nmetaphysical fictions pour into our philosophy. The holding fast to this\nrelation means taking it at its face value, neither less nor more; and\nto take it at its face value means first of all to take it just as we\nfeel it, and not to confuse ourselves with abstract talk _about_ it,\ninvolving words that drive us to invent secondary conceptions in order\nto neutralize their suggestions and to make our actual experience again\nseem rationally possible.\n\nWhat I do feel simply when a later moment of my experience succeeds an\nearlier one is that though they are two moments, the transition from the\none to the other is _continuous_. Continuity here is a definite sort of\nexperience; just as definite as is the _discontinuity-experience_ which\nI find it impossible to avoid when I seek to make the transition from an\nexperience of my own to one of yours. In this latter case I have to get\non and off again, to pass from a thing lived to another thing only\nconceived, and the break is positively experienced and noted. Though the\nfunctions exerted by my experience and by yours may be the same (_e.g._,\nthe same objects known and the same purposes followed), yet the sameness\nhas in this case to be ascertained expressly (and often with difficulty\nand uncertainty) after the break has been felt; whereas in passing from\none of my own moments to another the sameness of object and interest is\nunbroken, and both the earlier and the later experience are of things\ndirectly lived.\n\nThere is no other _nature_, no other whatness than this absence of break\nand this sense of continuity in that most intimate of all conjunctive\nrelations, the passing of one experience into another when they belong\nto the same self. And this whatness is real empirical 'content,' just as\nthe whatness of separation and discontinuity is real content in the\ncontrasted case. Practically to experience one's personal continuum in\nthis living way is to know the originals of the ideas of continuity and\nof sameness, to know what the words stand for concretely, to own all\nthat they can ever mean. But all experiences have their conditions; and\nover-subtle intellects, thinking about the facts here, and asking how\nthey are possible, have ended by substituting a lot of static objects of\nconception for the direct perceptual experiences. \"Sameness,\" they have\nsaid, \"must be a stark numerical identity; it can't run on from next to\nnext. Continuity can't mean mere absence of gap; for if you say two\nthings are in immediate contact, _at_ the contact how can they be two?\nIf, on the other hand, you put a relation of transition between them,\nthat itself is a third thing, and needs to be related or hitched to its\nterms. An infinite series is involved,\" and so on. The result is that\nfrom difficulty to difficulty, the plain conjunctive experience has been\ndiscredited by both schools, the empiricists leaving things permanently\ndisjoined, and the rationalist remedying the looseness by their\nAbsolutes or Substances, or whatever other fictitious agencies of union\nthey may have employed.[29] From all which artificiality we can be saved\nby a couple of simple reflections: first, that conjunctions and\nseparations are, at all events, co-ordinate phenomena which, if we take\nexperiences at their face value, must be accounted equally real; and\nsecond, that if we insist on treating things as really separate when\nthey are given as continuously joined, invoking, when union is required,\ntranscendental principles to overcome the separateness we have assumed,\nthen we ought to stand ready to perform the converse act. We ought to\ninvoke higher principles of _dis_union, also, to make our merely\nexperienced disjunctions more truly real. Failing thus, we ought to let\nthe originally given continuities stand on their own bottom. We have no\nright to be lopsided or to blow capriciously hot and cold.\n\n\nIII. THE COGNITIVE RELATION\n\nThe first great pitfall from which such a radical standing by experience\nwill save us is an artificial conception of the _relations between\nknower and known_. Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and\nits object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities; and\nthereupon the presence of the latter to the former, or the\n'apprehension' by the former of the latter, has assumed a paradoxical\ncharacter which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome.\nRepresentative theories put a mental 'representation,' 'image,' or\n'content' into the gap, as a sort of intermediary. Common-sense theories\nleft the gap untouched, declaring our mind able to clear it by a\nself-transcending leap. Transcendentalist theories left it impossible to\ntraverse by finite knowers, and brought an Absolute in to perform the\nsaltatory act. All the while, in the very bosom of the finite\nexperience, every conjunction required to make the relation intelligible\nis given in full. Either the knower and the known are:\n\n(1) the self-same piece of experience taken twice over in different\ncontexts; or they are\n\n(2) two pieces of _actual_ experience belonging to the same subject,\nwith definite tracts of conjunctive transitional experience between\nthem; or\n\n(3) the known is a _possible_ experience either of that subject or\nanother, to which the said conjunctive transitions _would_ lead, if\nsufficiently prolonged.\n\nTo discuss all the ways in which one experience may function as the\nknower of another, would be incompatible with the limits of this\nessay.[30] I have just treated of type 1, the kind of knowledge called\nperception.[31] This is the type of case in which the mind enjoys direct\n'acquaintance' with a present object. In the other types the mind has\n'knowledge-about' an object not immediately there. Of type 2, the\nsimplest sort of conceptual knowledge, I have given some account in two\n[earlier] articles.[32] Type 3 can always formally and hypothetically be\nreduced to type 2, so that a brief description of that type will put the\npresent reader sufficiently at my point of view, and make him see what\nthe actual meanings of the mysterious cognitive relation may be.\n\nSuppose me to be sitting here in my library at Cambridge, at ten\nminutes' walk from 'Memorial Hall,' and to be thinking truly of the\nlatter object. My mind may have before it only the name, or it may have\na clear image, or it may have a very dim image of the hall, but such\nintrinsic differences in the image make no difference in its cognitive\nfunction. Certain _extrinsic_ phenomena, special experiences of\nconjunction, are what impart to the image, be it what it may, its\nknowing office.\n\nFor instance, if you ask me what hall I mean by my image, and I can\ntell you nothing; or if I fail to point or lead you towards the Harvard\nDelta; or if, being led by you, I am uncertain whether the Hall I see be\nwhat I had in mind or not; you would rightly deny that I had 'meant'\nthat particular hall at all, even though my mental image might to some\ndegree have resembled it. The resemblance would count in that case as\ncoincidental merely, for all sorts of things of a kind resemble one\nanother in this world without being held for that reason to take\ncognizance of one another.\n\nOn the other hand, if I can lead you to the hall, and tell you of its\nhistory and present uses; if in its presence I feel my idea, however\nimperfect it may have been, to have led hither and to be now\n_terminated;_ if the associates of the image and of the felt hall run\nparallel, so that each term of the one context corresponds serially, as\nI walk, with an answering term of the others; why then my soul was\nprophetic, and my idea must be, and by common consent would be, called\ncognizant of reality. That percept was what I _meant_, for into it my\nidea has passed by conjunctive experiences of sameness and fulfilled\nintention. Nowhere is there jar, but every later moment continues and\ncorroborates an earlier one.\n\nIn this continuing and corroborating, taken in no transcendental sense,\nbut denoting definitely felt transitions, _lies all that the knowing of\na percept by an idea can possibly contain or signify_. Wherever such\ntransitions are felt, the first experience _knows_ the last one. Where\nthey do not, or where even as possibles they can not, intervene, there\ncan be no pretence of knowing. In this latter case the extremes will be\nconnected, if connected at all, by inferior relations--bare likeness or\nsuccession, or by 'withness' alone. Knowledge of sensible realities thus\ncomes to life inside the tissue of experience. It is _made_; and made by\nrelations that unroll themselves in time. Whenever certain\nintermediaries are given, such that, as they develop towards their\nterminus, there is experience from point to point of one direction\nfollowed, and finally of one process fulfilled, the result is that\n_their starting-point thereby becomes a knower and their terminus an\nobject meant or known_. That is all that knowing (in the simple case\nconsidered) can be known-as, that is the whole of its nature, put into\nexperiential terms. Whenever such is the sequence of our experiences we\nmay freely say that we had the terminal object 'in mind' from the\noutset, even although _at_ the outset nothing was there in us but a flat\npiece of substantive experience like any other, with no\nself-transcendency about it, and no mystery save the mystery of coming\ninto existence and of being gradually followed by other pieces of\nsubstantive experience, with conjunctively transitional experiences\nbetween. That is what we _mean_ here by the object's being 'in mind.' Of\nany deeper more real way of being in mind we have no positive\nconception, and we have no right to discredit our actual experience by\ntalking of such a way at all.\n\nI know that many a reader will rebel at this. \"Mere intermediaries,\" he\nwill say, \"even though they be feelings of continuously growing\nfulfilment, only _separate_ the knower from the known, whereas what we\nhave in knowledge is a kind of immediate touch of the one by the other,\nan 'apprehension' in the etymological sense of the word, a leaping of\nthe chasm as by lightning, an act by which two terms are smitten into\none, over the head of their distinctness. All these dead intermediaries\nof yours are out of each other, and outside of their termini still.\"\n\nBut do not such dialectic difficulties remind us of the dog dropping his\nbone and snapping at its image in the water? If we knew any more real\nkind of union _aliunde_, we might be entitled to brand all our\nempirical unions as a sham. But unions by continuous transition are the\nonly ones we know of, whether in this matter of a knowledge-about that\nterminates in an acquaintance, whether in personal identity, in logical\npredication through the copula 'is,' or elsewhere. If anywhere there\nwere more absolute unions realized, they could only reveal themselves to\nus by just such conjunctive results. These are what the unions are\n_worth_, these are all that _we can ever practically mean_ by union, by\ncontinuity. Is it not time to repeat what Lotze said of substances, that\nto _act like_ one is to _be_ one?[33] Should we not say here that to be\nexperienced as continuous is to be really continuous, in a world where\nexperience and reality come to the same thing? In a picture gallery a\npainted hook will serve to hang a painted chain by, a painted cable will\nhold a painted ship. In a world where both the terms and their\ndistinctions are affairs of experience, conjunctions that are\nexperienced must be at least as real as anything else. They will be'\nabsolutely' real conjunctions, if we have no transphenomenal Absolute\nready, to derealize the whole experienced world by, at a stroke. If, on\nthe other hand, we had such an Absolute, not one of our opponents'\ntheories of knowledge could remain standing any better than ours could;\nfor the distinctions as well as the conjunctions of experience would\nimpartially fall its prey. The whole question of how 'one' thing can\nknow 'another' would cease to be a real one at all in a world where\notherness itself was an illusion.[34]\n\nSo much for the essentials of the cognitive relation, where the\nknowledge is conceptual in type, or forms knowledge 'about' an object.\nIt consists in intermediary experiences (possible, if not actual) of\ncontinuously developing progress, and, finally, of fulfilment, when the\nsensible percept, which is the object, is reached. The percept here not\nonly _verifies_ the concept, proves its function of knowing that percept\nto be true, but the percept's existence as the terminus of the chain of\nintermediaries _creates_ the function. Whatever terminates that chain\nwas, because it now proves itself to be, what the concept 'had in mind.'\n\n\nThe towering importance for human life of this kind of knowing lies in\nthe fact that an experience that knows another can figure as its\n_representative_, not in any quasi-miraculous 'epistemological' sense,\nbut in the definite practical sense of being its _substitute_ in various\noperations, sometimes physical and sometimes mental, which lead us to\nits associates and results. By experimenting on our ideas of reality, we\nmay save ourselves the trouble of experimenting on the real experiences\nwhich they severally mean. The ideas form related systems, corresponding\npoint for point to the systems which the realities form; and by letting\nan ideal term call up its associates systematically, we may be led to a\nterminus which the corresponding real term would have led to in case we\nhad operated on the real world. And this brings us to the general\nquestion of substitution.\n\n\nIV. SUBSTITUTION\n\nIn Taine's brilliant book on 'Intelligence,' substitution was for the\nfirst time named as a cardinal logical function, though of course the\nfacts had always been familiar enough. What, exactly, in a system of\nexperiences, does the 'substitution' of one of them for another mean?\n\nAccording to my view, experience as a whole is a process in time,\nwhereby innumerable particular terms lapse and are superseded by others\nthat follow upon them by transitions which, whether disjunctive or\nconjunctive in content, are themselves experiences, and must in general\nbe accounted at least as real as the terms which they relate. What the\nnature of the event called 'superseding' signifies, depends altogether\non the kind of transition that obtains. Some experiences simply abolish\ntheir predecessors without continuing them in any way. Others are felt\nto increase or to enlarge their meaning, to carry out their purpose, or\nto bring us nearer to their goal. They 'represent' them, and may fulfil\ntheir function better than they fulfilled it themselves. But to 'fulfil\na function' in a world of pure experience can be conceived and defined\nin only one possible way. In such a world transitions and arrivals (or\nterminations) are the only events that happen, though they happen by so\nmany sorts of path. The only function that one experience can perform is\nto lead into another experience; and the only fulfilment we can speak of\nis the reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads\nto (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function. But\nthe whole system of experiences as they are immediately given presents\nitself as a quasi-chaos through which one can pass out of an initial\nterm in many directions and yet end in the same terminus, moving from\nnext to next by a great many possible paths.\n\nEither one of these paths might be a functional substitute for another,\nand to follow one rather than another might on occasion be an\nadvantageous thing to do. As a matter of fact, and in a general way,\nthe paths that run through conceptual experiences, that is, through\n'thoughts' or 'ideas' that 'know' the things in which they terminate,\nare highly advantageous paths to follow. Not only do they yield\ninconceivably rapid transitions; but, owing to the 'universal'\ncharacter[35] which they frequently possess, and to their capacity for\nassociation with one another in great systems, they outstrip the tardy\nconsecutions of the things themselves, and sweep us on towards our\nultimate termini in a far more labor-saving way than the following of\ntrains of sensible perception ever could. Wonderful are the new cuts and\nthe short-circuits which the thought-paths make. Most thought-paths, it\nis true, are substitutes for nothing actual; they end outside the real\nworld altogether, in wayward fancies, utopias, fictions or mistakes. But\nwhere they do re-enter reality and terminate therein, we substitute them\nalways; and with these substitutes we pass the greater number of our\nhours.\n\nThis is why I called our experiences, taken all together, a quasi-chaos.\nThere is vastly more discontinuity in the sum total of experiences than\nwe commonly suppose. The objective nucleus of every man's experience,\nhis own body, is, it is true, a continuous percept; and equally\ncontinuous as a percept (though we may be inattentive to it) is the\nmaterial environment of that body, changing by gradual transition when\nthe body moves. But the distant parts of the physical world are at all\ntimes absent from us, and form conceptual objects merely, into the\nperceptual reality of which our life inserts itself at points discrete\nand relatively rare. Round their several objective nuclei, partly shared\nand common and partly discrete, of the real physical world, innumerable\nthinkers, pursuing their several lines of physically true cogitation,\ntrace paths that intersect one another only at discontinuous perceptual\npoints, and the rest of the time are quite incongruent; and around all\nthe nuclei of shared 'reality,' as around the Dyak's head of my late\nmetaphor, floats the vast cloud of experiences that are wholly\nsubjective, that are non-substitutional, that find not even an eventual\nending for themselves in the perceptual world--the mere day-dreams and\njoys and sufferings and wishes of the individual minds. These exist\n_with_ one another, indeed, and with the objective nuclei, but out of\nthem it is probable that to all eternity no interrelated system of any\nkind will ever be made.\n\nThis notion of the purely substitutional or conceptual physical world\nbrings us to the most critical of all the steps in the development of a\nphilosophy of pure experience. The paradox of self-transcendency in\nknowledge comes back upon us here, but I think that our notions of pure\nexperience and of substitution, and our radically empirical view of\nconjunctive transitions, are _Denkmittel_ that will carry us safely\nthrough the pass.\n\n\nV. WHAT OBJECTIVE REFERENCE IS.\n\nWhosoever feels his experience to be something substitutional even while\nhe has it, may be said to have an experience that reaches beyond itself.\nFrom inside of its own entity it says 'more,' and postulates reality\nexisting elsewhere. For the transcendentalist, who holds knowing to\nconsist in a _salto mortale_ across an 'epistemological chasm,' such an\nidea presents no difficulty; but it seems at first sight as if it might\nbe inconsistent with an empiricism like our own. Have we not explained\nthat conceptual knowledge is made such wholly by the existence of things\nthat fall outside of the knowing experience itself--by intermediary\nexperiences and by a terminus that fulfils? Can the knowledge be there\nbefore these elements that constitute its being have come? And, if\nknowledge be not there, how can objective reference occur?\n\nThe key to this difficulty lies in the distinction between knowing as\nverified and completed, and the same knowing as in transit and on its\nway. To recur to the Memorial Hall example lately used, it is only when\nour idea of the Hall has actually terminated in the percept that we know\n'for certain' that from the beginning it was truly cognitive of _that_.\nUntil established by the end of the process, its quality of knowing\nthat, or indeed of knowing anything, could still be doubted; and yet the\nknowing really was there, as the result now shows. We were _virtual_\nknowers of the Hall long before we were certified to have been its\nactual knowers, by the percept's retroactive validating power. Just so\nwe are 'mortal' all the time, by reason of the virtuality of the\ninevitable event which will make us so when it shall have come.\n\nNow the immensely greater part of all our knowing never gets beyond this\nvirtual stage. It never is completed or nailed down. I speak not merely\nof our ideas of imperceptibles like ether-waves or dissociated 'ions,'\nor of 'ejects' like the contents of our neighbors' minds; I speak also\nof ideas which we might verify if we would take the trouble, but which\nwe hold for true although unterminated perceptually, because nothing\nsays 'no' to us, and there is no contradicting truth in sight. _To\ncontinue thinking unchallenged is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred,\nour practical substitute for knowing in the completed sense._ As each\nexperience runs by cognitive transition into the next one, and we\nnowhere feel a collision with what we elsewhere count as truth or fact,\nwe commit ourselves to the current as if the port were sure. We live, as\nit were, upon the front edge of an advancing wave-crest, and our sense\nof a determinate direction in falling forward is all we cover of the\nfuture of our path. It is as if a differential quotient should be\nconscious and treat itself as an adequate substitute for a traced-out\ncurve. Our experience, _inter alia_, is of variations of rate and of\ndirection, and lives in these transitions more than in the journey's\nend. The experiences of tendency are sufficient to act upon--what more\ncould we have _done_ at those moments even if the later verification\ncomes complete?\n\nThis is what, as a radical empiricist, I say to the charge that the\nobjective reference which is so flagrant a character of our experiences\ninvolves a chasm and a mortal leap. A positively conjunctive transition\ninvolves neither chasm nor leap. Being the very original of what we mean\nby continuity, it makes a continuum wherever it appears. I know full\nwell that such brief words as these will leave the hardened\ntranscendentalist unshaken. Conjunctive experiences _separate_ their\nterms, he will still say: they are third things interposed, that have\nthemselves to be conjoined by new links, and to invoke them makes our\ntrouble infinitely worse. To 'feel' our motion forward is impossible.\nMotion implies terminus; and how can terminus be felt before we have\narrived? The barest start and sally forwards, the barest tendency to\nleave the instant, involves the chasm and the leap. Conjunctive\ntransitions are the most superficial of appearances, illusions of our\nsensibility which philosophical reflection pulverizes at a touch.\nConception is our only trustworthy instrument, conception and the\nAbsolute working hand in hand. Conception disintegrates experience\nutterly, but its disjunctions are easily overcome again when the\nAbsolute takes up the task.\n\nSuch transcendentalists I must leave, provisionally at least, in full\npossession of their creed.[36] I have no space for polemics in this\narticle, so I shall simply formulate the empiricist doctrine as my\nhypothesis, leaving it to work or not work as it may.\n\nObjective reference, I say then, is an incident of the fact that so much\nof our experience comes as an insufficient and consists of process and\ntransition. Our fields of experience have no more definite boundaries\nthan have our fields of view. Both are fringed forever by a _more_ that\ncontinuously develops, and that continuously supersedes them as life\nproceeds. The relations, generally speaking, are as real here as the\nterms are, and the only complaint of the transcendentalist's with which\nI could at all sympathize would be his charge that, by first making\nknowledge to consist in external relations as I have done, and by then\nconfessing that nine-tenths of the time these are not actually but only\nvirtually there, I have knocked the solid bottom out of the whole\nbusiness, and palmed off a substitute of knowledge for the genuine\nthing. Only the admission, such a critic might say, that our ideas are\nself-transcendent and 'true' already, in advance of the experiences that\nare to terminate them, can bring solidity back to knowledge in a world\nlike this, in which transitions and terminations are only by exception\nfulfilled.\n\nThis seems to me an excellent place for applying the pragmatic method.\nWhen a dispute arises, that method consists in auguring what practical\nconsequences would be different if one side rather than the other were\ntrue. If no difference can be thought of, the dispute is a quarrel over\nwords. What then would the self-transcendency affirmed to exist in\nadvance of all experiential mediation or termination, be _known-as_?\nWhat would it practically result in for _us_, were it true?\n\nIt could only result in our orientation, in the turning of our\nexpectations and practical tendencies into the right path; and the\nright path here, so long as we and the object are not yet face to face\n(or can never get face to face, as in the case of ejects), would be the\npath that led us into the object's nearest neighborhood. Where direct\nacquaintance is lacking, 'knowledge about' is the next best thing, and\nan acquaintance with what actually lies about the object, and is most\nclosely related to it, puts such knowledge within our grasp. Ether-waves\nand your anger, for example, are things in which my thoughts will never\n_perceptually_ terminate, but my concepts of them lead me to their very\nbrink, to the chromatic fringes and to the hurtful words and deeds which\nare their really next effects.\n\nEven if our ideas did in themselves carry the postulated\nself-transcendency, it would still remain true that their putting us\ninto possession of such effects _would be the sole cash-value of the\nself-transcendency for us_. And this cash-value, it is needless to say,\nis _verbatim et literatim_ what our empiricist account pays in. On\npragmatist principles therefore, a dispute over self-transcendency is a\npure logomachy. Call our concepts of ejective things self-transcendent\nor the reverse, it makes no difference, so long as we don't differ about\nthe nature of that exalted virtue's fruits--fruits for us, of course,\nhumanistic fruits. If an Absolute were proved to exist for other\nreasons, it might well appear that _his_ knowledge is terminated in\ninnumerable cases where ours is still incomplete. That, however, would\nbe a fact indifferent to our knowledge. The latter would grow neither\nworse nor better, whether we acknowledged such an Absolute or left him\nout.\n\nSo the notion of a knowledge still _in transitu_ and on its way joins\nhands here with that notion of a 'pure experience' which I tried to\nexplain in my [essay] entitled 'Does Consciousness Exist?' The instant\nfield of the present is always experience in its 'pure' state, plain\nunqualified actuality, a simple _that_, as yet undifferentiated into\nthing and thought, and only virtually classifiable as objective fact or\nas some one's opinion about fact. This is as true when the field is\nconceptual as when it is perceptual. 'Memorial Hall' is 'there' in my\nidea as much as when I stand before it. I proceed to act on its account\nin either case. Only in the later experience that supersedes the present\none is this _naif_ immediacy retrospectively split into two parts, a\n'consciousness' and its 'content,' and the content corrected or\nconfirmed. While still pure, or present, any experience--mine, for\nexample, of what I write about in these very lines--passes for 'truth.'\nThe morrow may reduce it to 'opinion.' The transcendentalist in all his\nparticular knowledges is as liable to this reduction as I am: his\nAbsolute does not save him. Why, then, need he quarrel with an account\nof knowing that merely leaves it liable to this inevitable condition?\nWhy insist that knowing is a static relation out of time when it\npractically seems so much a function of our active life? For a thing to\nbe valid, says Lotze, is the same as to make itself valid. When the\nwhole universe seems only to be making itself valid and to be still\nincomplete (else why its ceaseless changing?) why, of all things,\nshould knowing be exempt? Why should it not be making itself valid like\neverything else? That some parts of it may be already valid or verified\nbeyond dispute, the empirical philosopher, of course, like any one else,\nmay always hope.\n\n\nVI. THE CONTERMINOUSNESS OF DIFFERENT MINDS[37]\n\nWith transition and prospect thus enthroned in pure experience, it is\nimpossible to subscribe to the idealism of the English school. Radical\nempiricism has, in fact, more affinities with natural realism than with\nthe views of Berkeley or of Mill, and this can be easily shown.\n\nFor the Berkeleyan school, ideas (the verbal equivalent of what I term\nexperiences) are discontinuous. The content of each is wholly immanent,\nand there are no transitions with which they are consubstantial and\nthrough which their beings may unite. Your Memorial Hall and mine, even\nwhen both are percepts, are wholly out of connection with each other.\nOur lives are a congeries of solipsisms, out of which in strict logic\nonly a God could compose a universe even of discourse. No dynamic\ncurrents run between my objects and your objects. Never can our minds\nmeet in the _same_.\n\nThe incredibility of such a philosophy is flagrant. It is 'cold,\nstrained, and unnatural' in a supreme degree; and it may be doubted\nwhether even Berkeley himself, who took it so religiously, really\nbelieved, when walking through the streets of London, that his spirit\nand the spirits of his fellow wayfarers had absolutely different towns\nin view.\n\nTo me the decisive reason in favor of our minds meeting in _some_ common\nobjects at least is that, unless I make that supposition, I have no\nmotive for assuming that your mind exists at all. Why do I postulate\nyour mind? Because I see your body acting in a certain way. Its\ngestures, facial movements, words and conduct generally, are\n'expressive,' so I deem it actuated as my own is, by an inner life like\nmine. This argument from analogy is my _reason_, whether an instinctive\nbelief runs before it or not. But what is 'your body' here but a percept\nin _my_ field? It is only as animating _that_ object, _my_ object, that\nI have any occasion to think of you at all. If the body that you actuate\nbe not the very body that I see there, but some duplicate body of your\nown with which that has nothing to do, we belong to different universes,\nyou and I, and for me to speak of you is folly. Myriads of such\nuniverses even now may coexist, irrelevant to one another; my concern is\nsolely with the universe with which my own life is connected.\n\nIn that perceptual part of _my_ universe which I call _your_ body, your\nmind and my mind meet and may be called conterminous. Your mind actuates\nthat body and mine sees it; my thoughts pass into it as into their\nharmonious cognitive fulfilment; your emotions and volitions pass into\nit as causes into their effects.\n\nBut that percept hangs together with all our other physical percepts.\nThey are of one stuff with it; and if it be our common possession, they\nmust be so likewise. For instance, your hand lays hold of one end of a\nrope and my hand lays hold of the other end. We pull against each other.\nCan our two hands be mutual objects in this experience, and the rope not\nbe mutual also? What is true of the rope is true of any other percept.\nYour objects are over and over again the same as mine. If I ask you\n_where_ some object of yours is, our old Memorial Hall, for example, you\npoint to _my_ Memorial Hall with _your_ hand which _I_ see. If you alter\nan object in your world, put out a candle, for example, when I am\npresent, _my_ candle _ipso facto_ goes out. It is only as altering my\nobjects that I guess you to exist. If your objects do not coalesce with\nmy objects, if they be not identically where mine are, they must be\nproved to be positively somewhere else. But no other location can be\nassigned for them, so their place must be what it seems to be, the\nsame.[38]\n\nPractically, then, our minds meet in a world of objects which they share\nin common, which would still be there, if one or several of the minds\nwere destroyed. I can see no formal objection to this supposition's\nbeing literally true. On the principles which I am defending, a 'mind'\nor 'personal consciousness' is the name for a series of experiences run\ntogether by certain definite transitions, and an objective reality is a\nseries of similar experiences knit by different transitions. If one and\nthe same experience can figure twice, once in a mental and once in a\nphysical context (as I have tried, in my article on 'Consciousness,' to\nshow that it can), one does not see why it might not figure thrice, or\nfour times, or any number of times, by running into as many different\nmental contexts, just as the same point, lying at their intersection,\ncan be continued into many different lines. Abolishing any number of\ncontexts would not destroy the experience itself or its other contexts,\nany more than abolishing some of the point's linear continuations would\ndestroy the others, or destroy the point itself.\n\nI well know the subtle dialectic which insists that a term taken in\nanother relation must needs be an intrinsically different term. The crux\nis always the old Greek one, that the same man can't be tall in relation\nto one neighbor, and short in relation to another, for that would make\nhim tall and short at once. In this essay I can not stop to refute this\ndialectic, so I pass on, leaving my flank for the time exposed.[39] But\nif my reader will only allow that the same '_now_' both ends his past\nand begins his future; or that, when he buys an acre of land from his\nneighbor, it is the same acre that successively figures in the two\nestates; or that when I pay him a dollar, the same dollar goes into his\npocket that came out of mine; he will also in consistency have to allow\nthat the same object may conceivably play a part in, as being related to\nthe rest of, any number of otherwise entirely different minds. This is\nenough for my present point: the common-sense notion of minds sharing\nthe same object offers no special logical or epistemological\ndifficulties of its own; it stands or falls with the general possibility\nof things being in conjunctive relation with other things at all.\n\nIn principle, then, let natural realism pass for possible. Your mind and\nmine _may_ terminate in the same percept, not merely against it, as if\nit were a third external thing, but by inserting themselves into it and\ncoalescing with it, for such is the sort of conjunctive union that\nappears to be experienced when a perceptual terminus 'fulfils.' Even so,\ntwo hawsers may embrace the same pile, and yet neither one of them touch\nany other part except that pile, of what the other hawser is attached\nto.\n\nIt is therefore not a formal question, but a question of empirical fact\nsolely, whether, when you and I are said to know the 'same' Memorial\nHall, our minds do terminate at or in a numerically identical percept.\nObviously, as a plain matter of fact, they do _not_. Apart from\ncolor-blindness and such possibilities, we see the Hall in different\nperspectives. You may be on one side of it and I on another. The percept\nof each of us, as he sees the surface of the Hall, is moreover only his\nprovisional terminus. The next thing beyond my percept is not your\nmind, but more percepts of my own into which my first percept develops,\nthe interior of the Hall, for instance, or the inner structure of its\nbricks and mortar. If our minds were in a literal sense _con_terminous,\nneither could get beyond the percept which they had in common, it would\nbe an ultimate barrier between them--unless indeed they flowed over it\nand became 'co-conscious' over a still larger part of their content,\nwhich (thought-transference apart) is not supposed to be the case. In\npoint of fact the ultimate common barrier can always be pushed, by both\nminds, farther than any actual percept of either, until at last it\nresolves itself into the mere notion of imperceptibles like atoms or\nether, so that, where we do terminate in percepts, our knowledge is only\nspeciously completed, being, in theoretic strictness, only a virtual\nknowledge of those remoter objects which conception carries out.\n\nIs natural realism, permissible in logic, refuted then by empirical\nfact? Do our minds have no object in common after all?\n\nYes, they certainly have _Space_ in common. On pragmatic principles we\nare obliged to predicate sameness wherever we can predicate no\nassignable point of difference. If two named things have every quality\nand function indiscernible, and are at the same time in the same place,\nthey must be written down as numerically one thing under two different\nnames. But there is no test discoverable, so far as I know, by which it\ncan be shown that the place occupied by your percept of Memorial Hall\ndiffers from the place occupied by mine. The percepts themselves may be\nshown to differ; but if each of us be asked to point out where his\npercept is, we point to an identical spot. All the relations, whether\ngeometrical or causal, of the Hall originate or terminate in that spot\nwherein our hands meet, and where each of us begins to work if he wishes\nto make the Hall change before the other's eyes. Just so it is with our\nbodies. That body of yours which you actuate and feel from within must\nbe in the same spot as the body of yours which I see or touch from\nwithout. 'There' for me means where I place my finger. If you do not\nfeel my finger's contact to be 'there' in _my_ sense, when I place it on\nyour body, where then do you feel it? Your inner actuations of your body\nmeet my finger _there_: it is _there_ that you resist its push, or\nshrink back, or sweep the finger aside with your hand. Whatever farther\nknowledge either of us may acquire of the real constitution of the body\nwhich we thus feel, you from within and I from without, it is in that\nsame place that the newly conceived or perceived constituents have to be\nlocated, and it is _through_ that space that your and my mental\nintercourse with each other has always to be carried on, by the\nmediation of impressions which I convey thither, and of the reactions\nthence which those impressions may provoke from you.\n\nIn general terms, then, whatever differing contents our minds may\neventually fill a place with, the place itself is a numerically\nidentical content of the two minds, a piece of common property in which,\nthrough which, and over which they join. The receptacle of certain of\nour experiences being thus common, the experiences themselves might some\nday become common also. If that day ever did come, our thoughts would\nterminate in a complete empirical identity, there would be an end, so\nfar as _those_ experiences went, to our discussions about truth. No\npoints of difference appearing, they would have to count as the same.\n\n\nVII. CONCLUSION\n\nWith this we have the outlines of a philosophy of pure experience before\nus. At the outset of my essay, I called it a mosaic philosophy. In\nactual mosaics the pieces are held together by their bedding, for which\nbedding the Substances, transcendental Egos, or Absolutes of other\nphilosophies may be taken to stand. In radical empiricism there is no\nbedding; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the\ntransitions experienced between them forming their cement. Of course\nsuch a metaphor is misleading, for in actual experience the more\nsubstantive and the more transitive parts run into each other\ncontinuously, there is in general no separateness needing to be\novercome by an external cement; and whatever separateness is actually\nexperienced is not overcome, it stays and counts as separateness to the\nend. But the metaphor serves to symbolize the fact that Experience\nitself, taken at large, can grow by its edges. That one moment of it\nproliferates into the next by transitions which, whether conjunctive or\ndisjunctive, continue the experiential tissue, can not, I contend, be\ndenied. Life is in the transitions as much as in the terms connected;\noften, indeed, it seems to be there more emphatically, as if our spurts\nand sallies forward were the real firing-line of the battle, were like\nthe thin line of flame advancing across the dry autumnal field which the\nfarmer proceeds to burn. In this line we live prospectively as well as\nretrospectively. It is 'of' the past, inasmuch as it comes expressly as\nthe past's continuation; it is 'of' the future in so far as the future,\nwhen it comes, will have continued _it_.\n\nThese relations of continuous transition experienced are what make our\nexperiences cognitive. In the simplest and completest cases the\nexperiences are cognitive of one another. When one of them terminates a\nprevious series of them with a sense of fulfilment, it, we say, is what\nthose other experiences 'had in view.' The knowledge, in such a case, is\nverified; the truth is 'salted down.' Mainly, however, we live on\nspeculative investments, or on our prospects only. But living on things\n_in posse_ is as good as living in the actual, so long as our credit\nremains good. It is evident that for the most part it is good, and that\nthe universe seldom protests our drafts.\n\nIn this sense we at every moment can continue to believe in an existing\n_beyond_. It is only in special cases that our confident rush forward\ngets rebuked. The beyond must, of course, always in our philosophy be\nitself of an experiential nature. If not a future experience of our own\nor a present one of our neighbor, it must be a thing in itself in Dr.\nPrince's and Professor Strong's sense of the term--that is, it must be\nan experience _for_ itself whose relation to other things we translate\ninto the action of molecules, ether-waves, or whatever else the\nphysical symbols may be.[40] This opens the chapter of the relations of\nradical empiricism to panpsychism, into which I can not enter now.[41]\n\nThe beyond can in any case exist simultaneously--for it can be\nexperienced _to have existed_ simultaneously--with the experience that\npractically postulates it by looking in its direction, or by turning or\nchanging in the direction of which it is the goal. Pending that\nactuality of union, in the virtuality of which the 'truth,' even now, of\nthe postulation consists, the beyond and its knower are entities split\noff from each other. The world is in so far forth a pluralism of which\nthe unity is not fully experienced as yet. But, as fast as verifications\ncome, trains of experience, once separate, run into one another; and\nthat is why I said, earlier in my article, that the unity of the world\nis on the whole undergoing increase. The universe continually grows in\nquantity by new experiences that graft themselves upon the older mass;\nbut these very new experiences often help the mass to a more\nconsolidated form.\n\nThese are the main features of a philosophy of pure experience. It has\ninnumerable other aspects and arouses innumerable questions, but the\npoints I have touched on seem enough to make an entering wedge. In my\nown mind such a philosophy harmonizes best with a radical pluralism,\nwith novelty and indeterminism, moralism and theism, and with the\n'humanism' lately sprung upon us by the Oxford and the Chicago\nschools.[42] I can not, however, be sure that all these doctrines are\nits necessary and indispensable allies. It presents so many points of\ndifference, both from the common sense and from the idealism that have\nmade our philosophic language, that it is almost as difficult to state\nit as it is to think it out clearly, and if it is ever to grow into a\nrespectable system, it will have to be built up by the contributions of\nmany co-operating minds. It seems to me, as I said at the outset of this\nessay, that many minds are, in point of fact, now turning in a direction\nthat points towards radical empiricism. If they are carried farther by\nmy words, and if then they add their stronger voices to my feebler one,\nthe publication of this essay will have been worth while.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[25] [Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. I, 1904, No. 20, September 29, and No. 21,\nOctober 13. Pp. 52-76 have also been reprinted, with some omissions,\nalterations and additions, in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 102-120. The\nalterations have been adopted in the present text. This essay is\nreferred to in _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 280, note 5. ED.]\n\n[26] [Cf. Berkeley: _Principles of Human Knowledge_, Introduction; Hume:\n_An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, sect. VII, part II\n(Selby-Bigge's edition, p. 74); James Mill: _Analysis of the Phenomena\nof the Human Mind_, ch. VIII; J. S. Mill: _An Examination of Sir William\nHamilton's Philosophy_, ch. XI, XII; W. K. Clifford: _Lectures and\nEssays_, pp. 274 ff.]\n\n[27] [See \"The Experience of Activity,\" below, pp. 155-189.]\n\n[28] The psychology books have of late described the facts here with\napproximate adequacy. I may refer to the chapters on 'The Stream of\nThought' and on the Self in my own _Principles of Psychology_, as well\nas to S. H. Hodgson's _Metaphysic of Experience_, vol. I, ch. VII and\nVIII.\n\n[29] [See \"The Thing and its Relations,\" below, pp. 92-122.]\n\n[30] For brevity's sake I altogether omit mention of the type\nconstituted by knowledge of the truth of general propositions. This type\nhas been thoroughly and, so far as I can see, satisfactorily, elucidated\nin Dewey's _Studies in Logical Theory_. Such propositions are reducible\nto the _S_-is-_P_ form; and the 'terminus' that verifies and fulfils is\nthe _SP_ in combination. Of course percepts may be involved in the\nmediating experiences, or in the 'satisfactoriness' of the _P_ in its\nnew position.\n\n[31] [See above, pp. 9-15.]\n\n[32] [\"On the Function of Cognition,\" _Mind_, vol. X, 1885, and \"The\nKnowing of Things Together,\" _Psychological Review_, vol. II, 1895.\nThese articles are reprinted, the former in full, the latter in part, in\n_The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 1-50. ED.] These articles and their\ndoctrine, unnoticed apparently by any one else, have lately gained\nfavorable comment from Professor Strong. [\"A Naturalistic Theory of the\nReference of Thought to Reality,\" _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. I, 1904.] Dr. Dickinson S. Miller has\nindependently thought out the same results [\"The Meaning of Truth and\nError,\" _Philosophical Review_, vol. II, 1893; \"The Confusion of\nFunction and Content in Mental Analysis,\" _Psychological Review_, vol.\nII, 1895], which Strong accordingly dubs the James-Miller theory of\ncognition.\n\n[33] [Cf. H. Lotze: _Metaphysik_, Secs. 37-39, 97, 98, 243.]\n\n[34] Mr. Bradley, not professing to know his absolute _aliunde_,\nnevertheless derealizes Experience by alleging it to be everywhere\ninfected with self-contradiction. His arguments seem almost purely\nverbal, but this is no place for arguing that point out. [Cf. F. H.\nBradley; _Appearance and Reality, passim;_ and below, pp. 106-122.]\n\n[35] Of which all that need be said in this essay is that it also can be\nconceived as functional, and defined in terms of transitions, or of the\npossibility of such. [Cf. _Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp.\n473-480, vol. II, pp. 337-340; _Pragmatism_, p. 265; _Some Problems of\nPhilosophy_, pp. 63-74; _Meaning of Truth_, pp. 246-247, etc. ED.]\n\n[36] [Cf. below, pp. 93 ff.]\n\n[37] [Cf. \"How Two Minds Can Know One Thing,\" below, pp. 123-136.]\n\n[38] The notion that our objects are inside of our respective heads is\nnot seriously defensible, so I pass it by.\n\n[39] [The argument is resumed below, pp. 101 sq. ED.]\n\n[40] Our minds and these ejective realities would still have space (or\npseudo-space, as I believe Professor Strong calls the medium of\ninteraction between 'things-in-themselves') in common. These would exist\n_where_, and begin to act _where_, we locate the molecules, etc., and\n_where_ we perceive the sensible phenomena explained thereby. [Cf.\nMorton Prince: _The Nature of Mind, and Human Automatism_, part I, ch.\nIII, IV; C. A. Strong: _Why the Mind Has a Body_, ch. XII.]\n\n[41] [Cf. below, p. 188; _A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. IV-VII.]\n\n[42] I have said something of this latter alliance in an article\nentitled 'Humanism and Truth,' in _Mind_, October, 1904. [Reprinted in\n_The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 51-101. Cf. also \"Humanism and Truth Once\nMore,\" below, pp. 244-265.]\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE THING AND ITS RELATIONS[43]\n\n\nExperience in its immediacy seems perfectly fluent. The active sense of\nliving which we all enjoy, before reflection shatters our instinctive\nworld for us, is self-luminous and suggests no paradoxes. Its\ndifficulties are disappointments and uncertainties. They are not\nintellectual contradictions.\n\nWhen the reflective intellect gets at work, however, it discovers\nincomprehensibilities in the flowing process. Distinguishing its\nelements and parts, it gives them separate names, and what it thus\ndisjoins it can not easily put together. Pyrrhonism accepts the\nirrationality and revels in its dialectic elaboration. Other\nphilosophies try, some by ignoring, some by resisting, and some by\nturning the dialectic procedure against itself, negating its first\nnegations, to restore the fluent sense of life again, and let redemption\ntake the place of innocence. The perfection with which any philosophy\nmay do this is the measure of its human success and of its importance in\nphilosophic history. In [the last essay], 'A World of Pure Experience,'\nI tried my own hand sketchily at the problem, resisting certain first\nsteps of dialectics by insisting in a general way that the immediately\nexperienced conjunctive relations are as real as anything else. If my\nsketch is not to appear too _naif_, I must come closer to details, and\nin the present essay I propose to do so.\n\n\nI\n\n'Pure experience' is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of life\nwhich furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual\ncategories. Only new-born babes, or men in semi-coma from sleep, drugs,\nillnesses, or blows, may be assumed to have an experience pure in the\nliteral sense of a _that_ which is not yet any definite _what_, tho'\nready to be all sorts of whats; full both of oneness and of manyness,\nbut in respects that don't appear; changing throughout, yet so\nconfusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points, either of\ndistinction or of identity, can be caught. Pure experience in this state\nis but another name for feeling or sensation. But the flux of it no\nsooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these\nsalient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that\nexperience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and\nprepositions and conjunctions. Its purity is only a relative term,\nmeaning the proportional amount of unverbalized sensation which it still\nembodies.\n\nFar back as we go, the flux, both as a whole and in its parts, is that\nof things conjunct and separated. The great continua of time, space, and\nthe self envelope everything, betwixt them, and flow together without\ninterfering. The things that they envelope come as separate in some ways\nand as continuous in others. Some sensations coalesce with some ideas,\nand others are irreconcilable. Qualities compenetrate one space, or\nexclude each other from it. They cling together persistently in groups\nthat move as units, or else they separate. Their changes are abrupt or\ndiscontinuous; and their kinds resemble or differ; and, as they do so,\nthey fall into either even or irregular series.\n\nIn all this the continuities and the discontinuities are absolutely\nco-ordinate matters of immediate feeling. The conjunctions are as\nprimordial elements of 'fact' as are the distinctions and disjunctions.\nIn the same act by which I feel that this passing minute is a new pulse\nof my life, I feel that the old life continues into it, and the feeling\nof continuance in no wise jars upon the simultaneous feeling of a\nnovelty. They, too, compenetrate harmoniously. Prepositions, copulas,\nand conjunctions, 'is,' 'isn't,' 'then,' 'before,' 'in,' 'on,' 'beside,'\n'between,' 'next,' 'like,' 'unlike,' 'as,' 'but,' flower out of the\nstream of pure experience, the stream of concretes or the sensational\nstream, as naturally as nouns and adjectives do, and they melt into it\nagain as fluidly when we apply them to a new portion of the stream.\n\n\nII\n\nIf now we ask why we must thus translate experience from a more concrete\nor pure into a more intellectualized form, filling it with ever more\nabounding conceptual distinctions, rationalism and naturalism give\ndifferent replies.\n\nThe rationalistic answer is that the theoretic life is absolute and its\ninterests imperative; that to understand is simply the duty of man; and\nthat who questions this need not be argued with, for by the fact of\narguing he gives away his case.\n\nThe naturalist answer is that the environment kills as well as sustains\nus, and that the tendency of raw experience to extinguish the experient\nhimself is lessened just in the degree in which the elements in it that\nhave a practical bearing upon life are analyzed out of the continuum and\nverbally fixed and coupled together, so that we may know what is in the\nwind for us and get ready to react in time. Had pure experience, the\nnaturalist says, been always perfectly healthy, there would never have\narisen the necessity of isolating or verbalizing any of its terms. We\nshould just have experienced inarticulately and unintellectually\nenjoyed. This leaning on 'reaction' in the naturalist account implies\nthat, whenever we intellectualize a relatively pure experience, we ought\nto do so for the sake of redescending to the purer or more concrete\nlevel again; and that if an intellect stays aloft among its abstract\nterms and generalized relations, and does not reinsert itself with its\nconclusions into some particular point of the immediate stream of life,\nit fails to finish out its function and leaves its normal race unrun.\n\nMost rationalists nowadays will agree that naturalism gives a true\nenough account of the way in which our intellect arose at first, but\nthey will deny these latter implications. The case, they will say,\nresembles that of sexual love. Originating in the animal need of getting\nanother generation born, this passion has developed secondarily such\nimperious spiritual needs that, if you ask why another generation ought\nto be born at all, the answer is: 'Chiefly that love may go on.' Just\nso with our intellect: it originated as a practical means of serving\nlife; but it has developed incidentally the function of understanding\nabsolute truth; and life itself now seems to be given chiefly as a means\nby which that function may be prosecuted. But truth and the\nunderstanding of it lie among the abstracts and universals, so the\nintellect now carries on its higher business wholly in this region,\nwithout any need of redescending into pure experience again.\n\nIf the contrasted tendencies which I thus designate as naturalistic and\nrationalistic are not recognized by the reader, perhaps an example will\nmake them more concrete. Mr. Bradley, for instance, is an\nultra-rationalist. He admits that our intellect is primarily practical,\nbut says that, for philosophers, the practical need is simply Truth.\nTruth, moreover, must be assumed 'consistent.' Immediate experience has\nto be broken into subjects and qualities, terms and relations, to be\nunderstood as truth at all. Yet when so broken it is less consistent\nthan ever. Taken raw, it is all un-distinguished. Intellectualized, it\nis all distinction without oneness. 'Such an arrangement may _work_, but\nthe theoretic problem is not solved.' The question is '_how_ the\ndiversity can exist in harmony with the oneness.' To go back to pure\nexperience is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle.'\nEven if your intuition is a fact, it is not an _understanding_. 'It is a\nmere experience, and furnishes no consistent view.' The experience\noffered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect rejects because\nthey contradict themselves. They offer a complex of diversities\nconjoined in a way which it feels is not its way and which it can not\nrepeat as its own.... For to be satisfied, my intellect must understand,\nand it can not understand by taking a congeries in the lump.'[44] So Mr.\nBradley, in the sole interests of 'understanding' (as he conceives that\nfunction), turns his back on finite experience forever. Truth must lie\nin the opposite direction, the direction of the Absolute; and this kind\nof rationalism and naturalism, or (as I will now call it) pragmatism,\nwalk thenceforward upon opposite paths. For the one, those intellectual\nproducts are most true which, turning their face towards the Absolute,\ncome nearest to symbolizing its ways of uniting the many and the one.\nFor the other, those are most true which most successfully dip back into\nthe finite stream of feeling and grow most easily confluent with some\nparticular wave or wavelet. Such confluence not only proves the\nintellectual operation to have been true (as an addition may 'prove'\nthat a subtraction is already rightly performed), but it constitutes,\naccording to pragmatism, all that we mean by calling it true. Only in so\nfar as they lead us, successfully or unsuccessfully, back into sensible\nexperience again, are our abstracts and universals true or false at\nall.[45]\n\n\nIII\n\nIn Section VI of [the last essay], I adopted in a general way the\ncommon-sense belief that one and the same world is cognized by our\ndifferent minds; but I left undiscussed the dialectical arguments which\nmaintain that this is logically absurd. The usual reason given for its\nbeing absurd is that it assumes one object (to wit, the world) to stand\nin two relations at once; to my mind, namely, and again to yours;\nwhereas a term taken in a second relation can not logically be the same\nterm which it was at first.\n\nI have heard this reason urged so often in discussing with absolutists,\nand it would destroy my radical empiricism so utterly, if it were valid,\nthat I am bound to give it an attentive ear, and seriously to search its\nstrength.\n\nFor instance, let the matter in dispute be term _M_, asserted to be on\nthe one hand related to _L_, and on the other to _N_; and let the two\ncases of relation be symbolized by _L--M_ and _M--N_ respectively. When,\nnow, I assume that the experience may immediately come and be given in\nthe shape _L--M--N_, with no trace of doubling or internal fission in\nthe _M_, I am told that this is all a popular delusion; that _L--M--N_\nlogically means two different experiences, _L--M_ and _M--N_, namely;\nand that although the Absolute may, and indeed must, from its superior\npoint of view, read its own kind of unity into _M_'s two editions, yet\nas elements in finite experience the two _M_'s lie irretrievably\nasunder, and the world between them is broken and unbridged.\n\nIn arguing this dialectic thesis, one must avoid slipping from the\nlogical into the physical point of view. It would be easy, in taking a\nconcrete example to fix one's ideas by, to choose one in which the\nletter _M_ should stand for a collective noun of some sort, which noun,\nbeing related to _L_ by one of its parts and to _N_ by another, would\ninwardly be two things when it stood outwardly in both relations. Thus,\none might say: 'David Hume, who weighed so many stone by his body,\ninfluences posterity by his doctrine.' The body and the doctrine are two\nthings, between which our finite minds can discover no real sameness,\nthough the same name covers both of them. And then, one might continue:\n'Only an Absolute is capable of uniting such a non-identity.' We must, I\nsay, avoid this sort of example, for the dialectic insight, if true at\nall, must apply to terms and relations universally. It must be true of\nabstract units as well as of nouns collective; and if we prove it by\nconcrete examples we must take the simplest, so as to avoid irrelevant\nmaterial suggestions.\n\nTaken thus in all its generality, the absolutist contention seems to use\nas its major premise Hume's notion 'that all our distinct perceptions\nare distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real\nconnexion among distinct existences.'[46] Undoubtedly, since we use two\nphrases in talking first about '_M_'s relation to _L_' and then about\n'_M_'s relation to _N_,' we must be having, or must have had, two\ndistinct perceptions;--and the rest would then seem to follow duly. But\nthe starting-point of the reasoning here seems to be the fact of the two\n_phrases_; and this suggests that the argument may be merely verbal. Can\nit be that the whole dialectic consists in attributing to the experience\ntalked-about a constitution similar to that of the language in which we\ndescribe it? Must we assert the objective double-ness of the _M_ merely\nbecause we have to name it twice over when we name its two relations?\n\nCandidly, I can think of no other reason than this for the dialectic\nconclusion;[47] for, if we think, not of our words, but of any simple\nconcrete matter which they may be held to signify, the experience itself\nbelies the paradox asserted. We use indeed two separate concepts in\nanalyzing our object, but we know them all the while to be but\nsubstitutional, and that the _M_ in _L--M_ and the _M_ in _M--N mean_\n(_i.e._, are capable of leading to and terminating in) one self-same\npiece, _M_, of sensible experience. This persistent identity of certain\nunits (or emphases, or points, or objects, or members--call them what\nyou will) of the experience-continuum, is just one of those conjunctive\nfeatures of it, on which I am obliged to insist so emphatically.[48] For\nsamenesses are parts of experience's indefeasible structure. When I hear\na bell-stroke and, as life flows on, its after image dies away, I still\nhark back to it as 'that same bell-stroke.' When I see a thing _M_, with\n_L_ to the left of it and _N_ to the right of it, I see it _as_ one _M_;\nand if you tell me I have had to 'take' it twice, I reply that if I\n'took' it a thousand times I should still _see_ it as a unit.[49] Its\nunity is aboriginal, just as the multiplicity of my successive takings\nis aboriginal. It comes unbroken as _that M_, as a singular which I\nencounter; they come broken, as _those_ takings, as my plurality of\noperations. The unity and the separateness are strictly co-ordinate. I\ndo not easily fathom why my opponents should find the separateness so\nmuch more easily understandable that they must needs infect the whole of\nfinite experience with it, and relegate the unity (now taken as a bare\npostulate and no longer as a thing positively perceivable) to the region\nof the Absolute's mysteries. I do not easily fathom this, I say, for the\nsaid opponents are above mere verbal quibbling; yet all that I can catch\nin their talk is the substitution of what is true of certain words for\nwhat is true of what they signify. They stay with the words,--not\nreturning to the stream of life whence all the meaning of them came, and\nwhich is always ready to reabsorb them.\n\n\n\nIV\n\nFor aught this argument proves, then, we may continue to believe that\none thing can be known by many knowers. But the denial of one thing in\nmany relations is but one application of a still profounder dialectic\ndifficulty. Man can't be good, said the sophists, for man is _man_ and\n_good_ is good; and Hegel[50] and Herbart in their day, more recently A.\nSpir,[51] and most recently and elaborately of all, Mr. Bradley, informs\nus that a term can logically only be a punctiform unit, and that not one\nof the conjunctive relations between things, which experience seems to\nyield, is rationally possible.\n\nOf course, if true, this cuts off radical empiricism without even a\nshilling. Radical empiricism takes conjunctive relations at their face\nvalue, holding them to be as real as the terms united by them.[52] The\nworld it represents as a collection, some parts of which are\nconjunctively and others disjunctively related. Two parts, themselves\ndisjoined, may nevertheless hang together by intermediaries with which\nthey are severally connected, and the whole world eventually may hang\ntogether similarly, inasmuch as _some_ path of conjunctive transition by\nwhich to pass from one of its parts to another may always be\ndiscernible. Such determinately various hanging-together may be called\n_concatenated_ union, to distinguish it from the 'through-and-through'\ntype of union, 'each in all and all in each' (union of _total conflux_,\nas one might call it), which monistic systems hold to obtain when things\nare taken in their absolute reality. In a concatenated world a partial\nconflux often is experienced. Our concepts and our sensations are\nconfluent; successive states of the same ego, and feelings of the same\nbody are confluent. Where the experience is not of conflux, it may be of\nconterminousness (things with but one thing between); or of\ncontiguousness (nothing between); or of likeness; or of nearness; or of\nsimultaneousness; or of in-ness; or of on-ness; or of for-ness; or of\nsimple with-ness; or even of mere and-ness, which last relation would\nmake of however disjointed a world otherwise, at any rate for that\noccasion a universe 'of discourse.' Now Mr. Bradley tells us that none\nof these relations, as we actually experience them, can possibly be\nreal.[53] My next duty, accordingly, must be to rescue radical\nempiricism from Mr. Bradley. Fortunately, as it seems to me, his general\ncontention, that the very notion of relation is unthinkable clearly, has\nbeen successfully met by many critics.[54]\n\nIt is a burden to the flesh, and an injustice both to readers and to\nthe previous writers, to repeat good arguments already printed. So, in\nnoticing Mr. Bradley, I will confine myself to the interests of radical\nempiricism solely.\n\n\nV\n\nThe first duty of radical empiricism, taking given conjunctions at their\nface-value, is to class some of them as more intimate and some as more\nexternal. When two terms are _similar_, their very natures enter into\nthe relation. Being _what_ they are, no matter where or when, the\nlikeness never can be denied, if asserted. It continues predicable as\nlong as the terms continue. Other relations, the _where_ and the _when_,\nfor example, seem adventitious. The sheet of paper may be 'off' or 'on'\nthe table, for example; and in either case the relation involves only\nthe outside of its terms. Having an outside, both of them, they\ncontribute by it to the relation. It is external: the term's inner\nnature is irrelevant to it. Any book, any table, may fall into the\nrelation, which is created _pro hac vice_, not by their existence, but\nby their casual situation. It is just because so many of the\nconjunctions of experience seem so external that a philosophy of pure\nexperience must tend to pluralism in its ontology. So far as things have\nspace-relations, for example, we are free to imagine them with different\norigins even. If they could get to _be_, and get into space at all, then\nthey may have done so separately. Once there, however, they are\n_additives_ to one another, and, with no prejudice to their natures, all\nsorts of space-relations may supervene between them. The question of\nhow things could come to be anyhow, is wholly different from the\nquestion what their relations, once the being accomplished, may consist\nin.\n\nMr. Bradley now affirms that such external relations as the\nspace-relations which we here talk of must hold of entirely different\nsubjects from those of which the absence of such relations might a\nmoment previously have been plausibly asserted. Not only is the\n_situation_ different when the book is on the table, but the _book\nitself_ is different as a book, from what it was when it was off the\ntable.[55] He admits that \"such external relations seem possible and\neven existing.... That you do not alter what you compare or rearrange in\nspace seems to common sense quite obvious, and that on the other side\nthere are as obvious difficulties does not occur to common sense at all.\nAnd I will begin by pointing out these difficulties.... There is a\nrelation in the result, and this relation, we hear, is to make no\ndifference in its terms. But, if so, to what does it make a difference?\n[_Doesn't it make a difference to us onlookers, at least?_] and what is\nthe meaning and sense of qualifying the terms by it? [_Surely the\nmeaning is to tell the truth about their relative position._[56]] If, in\nshort, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true of them?\n[_Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word 'of,' here, which I\nhave underscored, that is the root of Mr. Bradley's trouble?_] ... If\nthe terms from their inner nature do not enter into the relation, then,\nso far as they are concerned, they seem related for no reason at all....\nThings are spatially related, first in one way, and then become related\nin another way, and yet in no way themselves are altered; for the\nrelations, it is said, are but external. But I reply that, if so, I can\nnot _understand_ the leaving by the terms of one set of relations and\ntheir adoption of another fresh set. The process and its result to the\nterms, if they contribute nothing to it [_Surely they contribute to it\nall there is 'of' it!_] seem irrational throughout. [_If 'irrational'\nhere means simply 'non-rational,' or nondeductible from the essence of\neither term singly, it is no reproach; if it means 'contradicting' such\nessence, Mr. Bradley should show wherein and how._] But, if they\ncontribute anything, they must surely be affected internally. [_Why so,\nif they contribute only their surface? In such relations as 'on' 'a foot\naway,' 'between,' 'next,' etc., only surfaces are in question._] ... If\nthe terms contribute anything whatever, then the terms are affected\n[_inwardly altered?_] by the arrangement.... That for working purposes\nwe treat, and do well to treat, some relations as external merely I do\nnot deny, and that of course is not the question at issue here. That\nquestion is ... whether in the end and in principle a mere external\nrelation [_i.e., a relation which can change without forcing its terms\nto change their nature simultaneously_] is possible and forced on us by\nthe facts.\"[57]\n\nMr. Bradley next reverts to the antinomies of space, which, according to\nhim, prove it to be unreal, although it appears as so prolific a medium\nof external relations; and he then concludes that \"Irrationality and\nexternality can not be the last truth about things. Somewhere there must\nbe a reason why this and that appear together. And this reason and\nreality must reside in the whole from which terms and relations are\nabstractions, a whole in which their internal connection must lie, and\nout of which from the background appear those fresh results which never\ncould have come from the premises.\" And he adds that \"Where the whole is\ndifferent, the terms that qualify and contribute to it must so far be\ndifferent.... They are altered so far only [_How far? farther than\nexternally, yet not through and through?_] but still they are\naltered.... I must insist that in each case the terms are qualified by\ntheir whole [_Qualified how?--Do their external relations, situations,\ndates, etc., changed as these are in the new whole, fail to qualify them\n'far' enough?_], and that in the second case there is a whole which\ndiffers both logically and psychologically from the first whole; and I\nurge that in contributing to the change the terms so far are altered.\"\n\nNot merely the relations, then, but the terms are altered: _und zwar_ 'so\nfar.' But just _how_ far is the whole problem; and 'through-and-through'\nwould seem (in spite of Mr. Bradley's somewhat undecided utterances[58])\nto be the full Bradleyan answer. The 'whole' which he here treats as\nprimary and determinative of each part's manner of 'contributing,' simply\n_must_, when it alters, alter in its entirety. There _must_ be total\nconflux of its parts, each into and through each other. The 'must' appears\nhere as a _Machtspruch_, as an _ipse dixit_ of Mr. Bradley's\nabsolutistically tempered 'understanding,' for he candidly confesses that\nhow the parts _do_ differ as they contribute to different wholes, is\nunknown to him.[59]\n\nAlthough I have every wish to comprehend the authority by which Mr.\nBradley's understanding speaks, his words leave me wholly unconverted.\n'External relations' stand with their withers all unwrung, and remain,\nfor aught he proves to the contrary, not only practically workable, but\nalso perfectly intelligible factors of reality.\n\n\nVI\n\nMr. Bradley's understanding shows the most extraordinary power of\nperceiving separations and the most extraordinary impotence in\ncomprehending conjunctions. One would naturally say 'neither or both,'\nbut not so Mr. Bradley. When a common man analyzes certain _whats_ from\nout the stream of experience, he understands their distinctness _as thus\nisolated_. But this does not prevent him from equally well understanding\ntheir combination with each other _as originally experienced in the\nconcrete_, or their confluence with new sensible experiences in which\nthey recur as 'the same.' Returning into the stream of sensible\npresentation, nouns and adjectives, and _thats_ and abstract _whats_,\ngrow confluent again, and the word 'is' names all these experiences of\nconjunction. Mr. Bradley understands the isolation of the abstracts, but\nto understand the combination is to him impossible.[60] \"To understand\na complex _AB_,\" he says, \"I must begin with _A_ or _B_. And beginning,\nsay with _A_, if I then merely find _B_, I have either lost _A_, or I\nhave got beside _A_, [_the word 'beside' seems here vital, as meaning a\nconjunction 'external' and therefore unintelligible_] something else,\nand in neither case have I understood.[61] For my intellect can not\nsimply unite a diversity, nor has it in itself any form or way of\ntogetherness, and you gain nothing if, beside _A_ and _B_, you offer me\ntheir conjunction in fact. For to my intellect that is no more than\nanother external element. And 'facts,' once for all, are for my\nintellect not true unless they satisfy it.... The intellect has in its\nnature no principle of mere togetherness.\"[62]\n\nOf course Mr. Bradley has a right to define 'intellect' as the power by\nwhich we perceive separations but not unions--provided he give due\nnotice to the reader. But why then claim that such a maimed and\namputated power must reign supreme in philosophy, and accuse on its\nbehoof the whole empirical world of irrationality? It is true that he\nelsewhere attributes to the intellect a _proprius motus_ of transition,\nbut says that when he looks for _these_ transitions in the detail of\nliving experience, he 'is unable to verify such a solution.'[63]\n\nYet he never explains what the intellectual transitions would be like in\ncase we had them. He only defines them negatively--they are not spatial,\ntemporal, predicative, or causal; or qualitatively or otherwise serial;\nor in any way relational as we naively trace relations, for relations\n_separate_ terms, and need themselves to be hooked on _ad infinitum_.\nThe nearest approach he makes to describing a truly intellectual\ntransition is where he speaks of _A_ and _B_ as being 'united, each\nfrom its own nature, in a whole which is the nature of both alike.'[64]\nBut this (which, _pace_ Mr. Bradley, seems exquisitely analogous to\n'taking' a congeries in a 'lump,' if not to 'swamping') suggests nothing\nbut that _conflux_ which pure experience so abundantly offers, as when\n'space,' 'white' and 'sweet' are confluent in a 'lump of sugar,' or\nkinesthetic, dermal, and optical sensations confluent in 'my hand.'[65]\nAll that I can verify in the transitions which Mr. Bradley's intellect\ndesiderates as its _proprius motus_ is a reminiscence of these and other\nsensible conjunctions (especially space-conjunctions), but a\nreminiscence so vague that its originals are not recognized. Bradley in\nshort repeats the fable of the dog, the bone, and its image in the\nwater. With a world of particulars, given in loveliest union, in\nconjunction definitely various, and variously definite, the 'how' of\nwhich you 'understand' as soon as you see the fact of them,[66] for\nthere is no 'how' except the constitution of the fact as given; with all\nthis given him, I say, in pure experience, he asks for some ineffable\nunion in the abstract instead, which, if he gained it, would only be a\nduplicate of what he has already in his full possession. Surely he\nabuses the privilege which society grants to all us philosophers, of\nbeing puzzle-headed.\n\nPolemic writing like this is odious; but with absolutism in possession\nin so many quarters, omission to defend my radical empiricism against\nits best known champion would count as either superficiality or\ninability. I have to conclude that its dialectic has not invalidated in\nthe least degree the usual conjunctions by which the world, as\nexperienced, hangs so variously together. In particular it leaves an\nempirical theory of knowledge[67] intact, and lets us continue to\nbelieve with common sense that one object _may_ be known, if we have any\nground for thinking that it _is_ known, to many knowers.\n\nIn [the next essay] I shall return to this last supposition, which\nseems to me to offer other difficulties much harder for a philosophy of\npure experience to deal with than any of absolutism's dialectic\nobjections.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[43] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 2, January 19, 1905. Reprinted also as\nAppendix A in _A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 347-369. The author's\ncorrections have been adopted in the present text. ED.]\n\n[44] [F. H. Bradley: _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp.\n152-153, 23, 118, 104, 108-109, 570.]\n\n[45] Compare Professor MacLennan's admirable _Auseinandersetzung_ with\nMr. Bradley, in _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific\nMethods_, vol. I, [1904], pp. 403 ff., especially pp. 405-407.\n\n[46] [Hume: _Treatise of Human Nature_, Appendix, Selby-Bigge's edition,\np. 636.]\n\n[47] Technically, it seems classable as a 'fallacy of composition.' A\nduality, predicable of the two wholes, _L--M_ and _M--N_, is forthwith\npredicated of one of their parts, _M_.\n\n[48] See above, pp. 42 ff.\n\n[49] I may perhaps refer here to my _Principles of Psychology_, vol. I,\npp. 459 ff. It really seems 'weird' to have to argue (as I am forced now\nto do) for the notion that it is one sheet of paper (with its two\nsurfaces and all that lies between) which is both under my pen and on\nthe table while I write--the 'claim' that it is two sheets seems so\nbrazen. Yet I sometimes suspect the absolutists of sincerity!\n\n[50] [For the author's criticism of Hegel's view of relations, cf. _Will\nto Believe_, pp. 278-279. ED.]\n\n[51] [Cf. A. Spir: _Denken und Wirklichkeit_, part I, bk. III, ch. IV\n(containing also account of Herbart). ED.]\n\n[52] [See above, pp. 42, 49.]\n\n[53] Here again the reader must beware of slipping from logical into\nphenomenal considerations. It may well be that we _attribute_ a certain\nrelation falsely, because the circumstances of the case, being complex,\nhave deceived us. At a railway station we may take our own train, and\nnot the one that fills our window, to be moving. We here put motion in\nthe wrong place in the world, but in its original place the motion is a\npart of reality. What Mr. Bradley means is nothing like this, but rather\nthat such things as motion are nowhere real, and that, even in their\naboriginal and empirically incorrigible seats, relations are impossible\nof comprehension.\n\n[54] Particularly so by Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, in his _Man and\nthe Cosmos_; by L. T. Hobhouse, in chapter XII (\"The Validity of\nJudgment\") of his _Theory of Knowledge_; and by F. C. S. Schiller, in\nhis _Humanism_, essay XI. Other fatal reviews (in my opinion) are\nHodder's, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. I, [1894], p. 307; Stout's\nin the _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_, 1901-2, p. 1; and\nMacLennan's in [_The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific\nMethods_, vol. I, 1904, p. 403].\n\n[55] Once more, don't slip from logical into physical situations. Of\ncourse, if the table be wet, it will moisten the book, or if it be\nslight enough and the book heavy enough, the book will break it down.\nBut such collateral phenomena are not the point at issue. The point is\nwhether the successive relations 'on' and 'not-on' can rationally (not\nphysically) hold of the same constant terms, abstractly taken. Professor\nA. E. Taylor drops from logical into material considerations when he\ninstances color-contrast as a proof that _A_, 'as contra-distinguished\nfrom _B_, is not the same thing as mere _A_ not in any way affected'\n(_Elements of Metaphysics_, p. 145). Note the substitution, for\n'related' of the word 'affected,' which begs the whole question.\n\n[56] But \"is there any sense,\" asks Mr. Bradley, peevishly, on p. 579,\n\"and if so, what sense in truth that is only outside and 'about'\nthings?\" Surely such a question may be left unanswered.\n\n[57] _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp. 575-576.\n\n[58] I say 'undecided,' because, apart from the 'so far,' which sounds\nterribly half-hearted, there are passages in these very pages in which\nMr. Bradley admits the pluralistic thesis. Read, for example, what he\nsays, on p. 578, of a billiard ball keeping its 'character' unchanged,\nthough, in its change of place, its 'existence' gets altered; or what\nhe says, on p. 579, of the possibility that an abstract quality A, B,\nor C, in a thing, 'may throughout remain unchanged' although the thing\nbe altered; or his admission that in red-hairedness, both as analyzed\nout of a man and when given with the rest of him, there may be 'no\nchange' (p. 580). Why does he immediately add that for the pluralist\nto plead the non-mutation of such abstractions would be an _ignoratio\nelenchi_? It is impossible to admit it to be such. The entire\n_elenchus_ and inquest is just as to whether parts which you can\nabstract from existing wholes can also contribute to other wholes\nwithout changing their inner nature. If they can thus mould various\nwholes into new _gestaltqualitaeten_, then it follows that the same\nelements are logically able to exist in different wholes [whether\nphysically able would depend on additional hypotheses]; that partial\nchanges are thinkable, and through-and-through change not a dialectic\nnecessity; that monism is only an hypothesis; and that an additively\nconstituted universe is a rationally respectable hypothesis also. All\nthe theses of radical empiricism, in short, follow.\n\n[59] _Op. cit._, pp. 577-579.\n\n[60] So far as I catch his state of mind, it is somewhat like this:\n'Book,' 'table,' 'on'--how does the existence of these three abstract\nelements result in _this_ book being livingly on _this_ table. Why isn't\nthe table on the book? Or why doesn't the 'on' connect itself with\nanother book, or something that is not a table? Mustn't something _in_\neach of the three elements already determine the two others to _it_, so\nthat they do not settle elsewhere or float vaguely? Mustn't the _whole\nfact be pre-figured in each part_, and exist _de jure_ before it can\nexist _de facto_? But, if so, in what can the jural existence consist,\nif not in a spiritual miniature of the whole fact's constitution\nactuating every partial factor as its purpose? But is this anything but\nthe old metaphysical fallacy of looking behind a fact _in esse_ for the\nground of the fact, and finding it in the shape of the very same fact\n_in posse_? Somewhere we must leave off with a _constitution_ behind\nwhich there is nothing.\n\n[61] Apply this to the case of 'book-on-table'! W. J.\n\n[62] _Op. cit._, pp. 570, 572.\n\n[63] _Op. cit._, pp. 568, 569.\n\n[64] _Op. cit._, p. 570.\n\n[65] How meaningless is the contention that in such wholes (or in\n'book-on-table,' 'watch-in-pocket,' etc.) the relation is an additional\nentity _between_ the terms, needing itself to be related again to each!\nBoth Bradley (_op. cit._, pp. 32-33) and Royce (_The World and the\nIndividual_, vol. I, p. 128) lovingly repeat this piece of profundity.\n\n[66] The 'why' and the 'whence' are entirely other questions, not under\ndiscussion, as I understand Mr. Bradley. Not how experience gets itself\nborn, but how it can be what it is after it is born, is the puzzle.\n\n[67] Above, p. 52.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nHOW TWO MINDS CAN KNOW ONE THING[68]\n\n\nIn [the essay] entitled 'Does Consciousness Exist?' I have tried to show\nthat when we call an experience 'conscious,' that does not mean that it\nis suffused throughout with a peculiar modality of being ('psychic'\nbeing) as stained glass may be suffused with light, but rather that it\nstands in certain determinate relations to other portions of experience\nextraneous to itself. These form one peculiar 'context' for it; while,\ntaken in another context of experiences, we class it as a fact in the\nphysical world. This 'pen,' for example, is, in the first instance, a\nbald _that_, a datum, fact, phenomenon, content, or whatever other\nneutral or ambiguous name you may prefer to apply. I called it in that\narticle a 'pure experience.' To get classed either as a physical pen or\nas some one's percept of a pen, it must assume a _function_, and that\ncan only happen in a more complicated world. So far as in that world it\nis a stable feature, holds ink, marks paper and obeys the guidance of a\nhand, it is a physical pen. That is what we mean by being 'physical,' in\na pen. So far as it is instable, on the contrary, coming and going with\nthe movements of my eyes, altering with what I call my fancy, continuous\nwith subsequent experiences of its 'having been' (in the past tense), it\nis the percept of a pen in my mind. Those peculiarities are what we mean\nby being 'conscious,' in a pen.\n\nIn Section VI of another [essay][69] I tried to show that the same\n_that_, the same numerically identical pen of pure experience, can enter\nsimultaneously into many conscious contexts, or, in other words, be an\nobject for many different minds. I admitted that I had not space to\ntreat of certain possible objections in that article; but in [the last\nessay] I took some of the objections up. At the end of that [essay] I\nsaid that still more formidable-sounding objections remained; so, to\nleave my pure-experience theory in as strong a state as possible, I\npropose to consider those objections now.\n\n\nI\n\nThe objections I previously tried to dispose of were purely logical or\ndialectical. No one identical term, whether physical or psychical, it\nhad been said, could be the subject of two relations at once. This\nthesis I sought to prove unfounded. The objections that now confront us\narise from the nature supposed to inhere in psychic facts specifically.\nWhatever may be the case with physical objects, a fact of consciousness,\nit is alleged (and indeed very plausibly), can not, without\nself-contradiction, be treated as a portion of two different minds, and\nfor the following reasons.\n\nIn the physical world we make with impunity the assumption that one and\nthe same material object can figure in an indefinitely large number of\ndifferent processes at once. When, for instance, a sheet of rubber is\npulled at its four corners, a unit of rubber in the middle of the sheet\nis affected by all four of the pulls. It _transmits_ them each, as if\nit pulled in four different ways at once itself. So, an air-particle or\nan ether-particle 'compounds' the different directions of movement\nimprinted on it without obliterating their several individualities. It\ndelivers them distinct, on the contrary, at as many several 'receivers'\n(ear, eye or what not) as may be 'tuned' to that effect. The apparent\nparadox of a distinctness like this surviving in the midst of\ncompounding is a thing which, I fancy, the analyses made by physicists\nhave by this time sufficiently cleared up.\n\nBut if, on the strength of these analogies, one should ask: \"Why, if two\nor more lines can run through one and the same geometrical point, or if\ntwo or more distinct processes of activity can run through one and the\nsame physical thing so that it simultaneously plays a role in each and\nevery process, might not two or more streams of personal consciousness\ninclude one and the same unit of experience so that it would\nsimultaneously be a part of the experience of all the different minds?\"\none would be checked by thinking of a certain peculiarity by which\nphenomena of consciousness differ from physical things.\n\nWhile physical things, namely, are supposed to be permanent and to have\ntheir 'states,' a fact of consciousness exists but once and _is_ a\nstate. Its _esse_ is _sentiri_; it is only so far as it is felt; and it\nis unambiguously and unequivocally exactly _what_ is felt. The\nhypothesis under consideration would, however, oblige it to be felt\nequivocally, felt now as part of my mind and again at the same time\n_not_ as a part of my mind, but of yours (for my mind is _not_ yours),\nand this would seem impossible without doubling it into two distinct\nthings, or, in other words, without reverting to the ordinary dualistic\nphilosophy of insulated minds each knowing its object representatively\nas a third thing,--and that would be to give up the pure-experience\nscheme altogether.\n\nCan we see, then, any way in which a unit of pure experience might enter\ninto and figure in two diverse streams of consciousness without turning\nitself into the two units which, on our hypothesis, it must not be?\n\n\nII\n\nThere is a way; and the first step towards it is to see more precisely\nhow the unit enters into either one of the streams of consciousness\nalone. Just what, from being 'pure,' does its becoming 'conscious'\n_once_ mean?\n\nIt means, first, that new experiences have supervened; and, second, that\nthey have borne a certain assignable relation to the unit supposed.\nContinue, if you please, to speak of the pure unit as 'the pen.' So far\nas the pen's successors do but repeat the pen or, being different from\nit, are 'energetically'[70] related to it, it and they will form a group\nof stably existing physical things. So far, however, as its successors\ndiffer from it in another well-determined way, the pen will figure in\ntheir context, not as a physical, but as a mental fact. It will become a\npassing 'percept,' _my_ percept of that pen. What now is that decisive\nwell-determined way?\n\nIn the chapter on 'The Self,' in my _Principles of Psychology_, I\nexplained the continuous identity of each personal consciousness as a\nname for the practical fact that new experiences[71] come which look\nback on the old ones, find them 'warm,' and greet and appropriate them\nas 'mine.' These operations mean, when analyzed empirically, several\ntolerably definite things, viz.:\n\n1. That the new experience has past time for its 'content,' and in that\ntime a pen that 'was';\n\n2. That 'warmth' was also about the pen, in the sense of a group of\nfeelings ('interest' aroused, 'attention' turned, 'eyes' employed, etc.)\nthat were closely connected with it and that now recur and evermore\nrecur with unbroken vividness, though from the pen of now, which may be\nonly an image, all such vividness may have gone;\n\n3. That these feelings are the nucleus of 'me';\n\n4. That whatever once was associated with them was, at least for that\none moment, 'mine'--my implement if associated with hand-feelings, my\n'percept' only, if only eye-feelings and attention-feelings were\ninvolved.\n\nThe pen, realized in this retrospective way as my percept, thus figures\nas a fact of 'conscious' life. But it does so only so far as\n'appropriation' has occurred; and appropriation is _part of the content\nof a later experience_ wholly additional to the originally 'pure' pen.\n_That_ pen, virtually both objective and subjective, is at its own\nmoment actually and intrinsically neither. It has to be looked back upon\nand _used_, in order to be classed in either distinctive way. But its\nuse, so called, is in the hands of the other experience, while _it_\nstands, throughout the operation, passive and unchanged.\n\nIf this pass muster as an intelligible account of how an experience\noriginally pure can enter into one consciousness, the next question is\nas to how it might conceivably enter into two.\n\n\nIII\n\nObviously no new kind of condition would have to be supplied. All that\nwe should have to postulate would be a second subsequent experience,\ncollateral and contemporary with the first subsequent one, in which a\nsimilar act of appropriation should occur. The two acts would interfere\nneither with one another nor with the originally pure pen. It would\nsleep undisturbed in its own past, no matter how many such successors\nwent through their several appropriative acts. Each would know it as\n'my' percept, each would class it as a 'conscious' fact.\n\nNor need their so classing it interfere in the least with their classing\nit at the same time as a physical pen. Since the classing in both cases\ndepends upon the taking of it in one group or another of associates, if\nthe superseding experience were of wide enough 'span' it could think the\npen in both groups simultaneously, and yet distinguish the two groups.\nIt would then see the whole situation conformably to what we call 'the\nrepresentative theory of cognition,' and that is what we all\nspontaneously do. As a man philosophizing 'popularly,' I believe that\nwhat I see myself writing with is double--I think it in its relations to\nphysical nature, and also in its relations to my personal life; I see\nthat it is in my mind, but that it also is a physical pen.\n\nThe paradox of the same experience figuring in two consciousnesses seems\nthus no paradox at all. To be 'conscious' means not simply to be, but to\nbe reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that\nbeing; and this is just what happens when the appropriative experience\nsupervenes. The pen-experience in its original immediacy is not aware of\nitself, it simply _is_, and the second experience is required for what\nwe call awareness of it to occur.[72] The difficulty of understanding\nwhat happens here is, therefore, not a logical difficulty: there is no\ncontradiction involved. It is an ontological difficulty rather.\nExperiences come on an enormous scale, and if we take them all\ntogether, they come in a chaos of incommensurable relations that we can\nnot straighten out. We have to abstract different groups of them, and\nhandle these separately if we are to talk of them at all. But how the\nexperiences ever _get themselves made_, or _why_ their characters and\nrelations are just such as appear, we can not begin to understand.\nGranting, however, that, by hook or crook, they _can_ get themselves\nmade, and can appear in the successions that I have so schematically\ndescribed, then we have to confess that even although (as I began by\nquoting from the adversary) 'a feeling only is as it is felt,' there is\nstill nothing absurd in the notion of its being felt in two different\nways at once, as yours, namely, and as mine. It is, indeed, 'mine' only\nas it is felt as mine, and 'yours' only as it is felt as yours. But it\nis felt as neither _by itself_, but only when 'owned' by our two several\nremembering experiences, just as one undivided estate is owned by\nseveral heirs.\n\n\nIV\n\nOne word, now, before I close, about the corollaries of the views set\nforth. Since the acquisition of conscious quality on the part of an\nexperience depends upon a context coming to it, it follows that the sum\ntotal of all experiences, having no context, can not strictly be called\nconscious at all. It is a _that_, an Absolute, a 'pure' experience on an\nenormous scale, undifferentiated and undifferentiable into thought and\nthing. This the post-Kantian idealists have always practically\nacknowledged by calling their doctrine an _Identitaetsphilosophie_. The\nquestion of the _Beseelung_ of the All of things ought not, then, even\nto be asked. No more ought the question of its _truth_ to be asked, for\ntruth is a relation inside of the sum total, obtaining between thoughts\nand something else, and thoughts, as we have seen, can only be\ncontextual things. In these respects the pure experiences of our\nphilosophy are, in themselves considered, so many little absolutes, the\nphilosophy of pure experience being only a more comminuted\n_Identitaetsphilosophie_.[73]\n\nMeanwhile, a pure experience can be postulated with any amount whatever\nof span or field. If it exert the retrospective and appropriative\nfunction on any other piece of experience, the latter thereby enters\ninto its own conscious stream. And in this operation time intervals make\nno essential difference. After sleeping, my retrospection is as perfect\nas it is between two successive waking moments of my time. Accordingly\nif, millions of years later, a similarly retrospective experience should\nanyhow come to birth, my present thought would form a genuine portion of\nits long-span conscious life. 'Form a portion,' I say, but not in the\nsense that the two things could be entitatively or substantively\none--they cannot, for they are numerically discrete facts--but only in\nthe sense that the _functions_ of my present thought, its knowledge, its\npurpose, its content and 'consciousness,' in short, being inherited,\nwould be continued practically unchanged. Speculations like Fechner's,\nof an Earth-soul, of wider spans of consciousness enveloping narrower\nones throughout the cosmos, are, therefore, philosophically quite in\norder, provided they distinguish the functional from the entitative\npoint of view, and do not treat the minor consciousness under discussion\nas a kind of standing material of which the wider ones _consist_.[74]\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[68] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 7, March 30, 1905.]\n\n[69] \"A World of Pure Experience,\" above, pp. 39-91.\n\n[70] [For an explanation of this expression, see above, p. 32.]\n\n[71] I call them 'passing thoughts' in the book--the passage in point\ngoes from pages 330 to 342 of vol. I.\n\n[72] Shadworth Hodgson has laid great stress on the fact that the\nminimum of consciousness demands two subfeelings, of which the second\nretrospects the first. (Cf. the section 'Analysis of Minima' in his\n_Philosophy of Reflection_, vol. I, p. 248; also the chapter entitled\n'The Moment of Experience' in his _Metaphysic of Experience_, vol. I, p.\n34.) 'We live forward, but we understand backward' is a phrase of\nKierkegaard's which Hoeffding quotes. [H. Hoeffding: \"A Philosophical\nConfession,\" _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_,\nvol. II, 1905, p. 86.]\n\n[73] [Cf. below, pp. 197, 202.]\n\n[74] [Cf. _A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. IV, 'Concerning Fechner,' and\nLect. V, 'The Compounding of Consciousness.']\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE PLACE OF AFFECTIONAL FACTS IN A WORLD OF PURE EXPERIENCE[75]\n\n\nCommon sense and popular philosophy are as dualistic as it is possible\nto be. Thoughts, we all naturally think, are made of one kind of\nsubstance, and things of another. Consciousness, flowing inside of us in\nthe forms of conception or judgment, or concentrating itself in the\nshape of passion or emotion, can be directly felt as the spiritual\nactivity which it is, and known in contrast with the space-filling\nobjective 'content' which it envelopes and accompanies. In opposition to\nthis dualistic philosophy, I tried, in [the first essay] to show that\nthoughts and things are absolutely homogeneous as to their material, and\nthat their opposition is only one of relation and of function. There is\nno thought-stuff different from thing-stuff, I said; but the same\nidentical piece of 'pure experience' (which was the name I gave to the\n_materia prima_ of everything) can stand alternately for a 'fact of\nconsciousness' or for a physical reality, according as it is taken in\none context or in another. For the right understanding of what follows,\nI shall have to presuppose that the reader will have read that\n[essay].[76]\n\nThe commonest objection which the doctrine there laid down runs up\nagainst is drawn from the existence of our 'affections.' In our\npleasures and pains, our loves and fears and angers, in the beauty,\ncomicality, importance or preciousness of certain objects and\nsituations, we have, I am told by many critics, a great realm of\nexperience intuitively recognized as spiritual, made, and felt to be\nmade, of consciousness exclusively, and different in nature from the\nspace-filling kind of being which is enjoyed by physical objects. In\nSection VII. of [the first essay], I treated of this class of\nexperiences very inadequately, because I had to be so brief. I now\nreturn to the subject, because I believe that, so far from invalidating\nmy general thesis, these phenomena, when properly analyzed, afford it\npowerful support.\n\nThe central point of the pure-experience theory is that 'outer' and\n'inner' are names for two groups into which we sort experiences\naccording to the way in which they act upon their neighbors. Any one\n'content,' such as _hard_, let us say, can be assigned to either group.\nIn the outer group it is 'strong,' it acts 'energetically' and\naggressively. Here whatever is hard interferes with the space its\nneighbors occupy. It dents them; is impenetrable by them; and we call\nthe hardness then a physical hardness. In the mind, on the contrary, the\nhard thing is nowhere in particular, it dents nothing, it suffuses\nthrough its mental neighbors, as it were, and interpenetrates them.\nTaken in this group we call both it and them 'ideas' or 'sensations';\nand the basis of the two groups respectively is the different type of\ninterrelation, the mutual impenetrability, on the one hand, and the\nlack of physical interference and interaction, on the other.\n\nThat what in itself is one and the same entity should be able to\nfunction thus differently in different contexts is a natural consequence\nof the extremely complex reticulations in which our experiences come. To\nher offspring a tigress is tender, but cruel to every other living\nthing--both cruel and tender, therefore, at once. A mass in movement\nresists every force that operates contrariwise to its own direction, but\nto forces that pursue the same direction, or come in at right angles, it\nis absolutely inert. It is thus both energetic and inert; and the same\nis true (if you vary the associates properly) of every other piece of\nexperience. It is only towards certain specific groups of associates\nthat the physical energies, as we call them, of a content are put forth.\nIn another group it may be quite inert.\n\nIt is possible to imagine a universe of experiences in which the only\nalternative between neighbors would be either physical interaction or\ncomplete inertness. In such a world the mental or the physical _status_\nof any piece of experience would be unequivocal. When active, it would\nfigure in the physical, and when inactive, in the mental group.\n\nBut the universe we live in is more chaotic than this, and there is room\nin it for the hybrid or ambiguous group of our affectional experiences,\nof our emotions and appreciative perceptions. In the paragraphs that\nfollow I shall try to show:\n\n(1) That the popular notion that these experiences are intuitively given\nas purely inner facts is hasty and erroneous; and\n\n(2) That their ambiguity illustrates beautifully my central thesis that\nsubjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is\naboriginally made of, but of its classification. Classifications depend\non our temporary purposes. For certain purposes it is convenient to take\nthings in one set of relations, for other purposes in another set. In\nthe two cases their contexts are apt to be different. In the case of our\naffectional experiences we have no permanent and steadfast purpose that\nobliges us to be consistent, so we find it easy to let them float\nambiguously, sometimes classing them with our feelings, sometimes with\nmore physical realities, according to caprice or to the convenience of\nthe moment. Thus would these experiences, so far from being an obstacle\nto the pure experience philosophy, serve as an excellent corroboration\nof its truth.\n\nFirst of all, then, it is a mistake to say, with the objectors whom I\nbegan by citing, that anger, love and fear are affections purely of the\nmind. That, to a great extent at any rate, they are simultaneously\naffections of the body is proved by the whole literature of the\nJames-Lange theory of emotion.[77] All our pains, moreover, are local,\nand we are always free to speak of them in objective as well as in\nsubjective terms. We can say that we are aware of a painful place,\nfilling a certain bigness in our organism, or we can say that we are\ninwardly in a 'state' of pain. All our adjectives of worth are\nsimilarly ambiguous--I instanced some of the ambiguities [in the first\nessay].[78] Is the preciousness of a diamond a quality of the gem? or is\nit a feeling in our mind? Practically we treat it as both or as either,\naccording to the temporary direction of our thought. 'Beauty,' says\nProfessor Santayana, 'is pleasure objectified'; and in Sections 10 and\n11 of his work, _The Sense of Beauty_, he treats in a masterly way of\nthis equivocal realm. The various pleasures we receive from an object\nmay count as 'feelings' when we take them singly, but when they combine\nin a total richness, we call the result the 'beauty' of the object, and\ntreat it as an outer attribute which our mind perceives. We discover\nbeauty just as we discover the physical properties of things. Training\nis needed to make us expert in either line. Single sensations also may\nbe ambiguous. Shall we say an 'agreeable degree of heat,' or an\n'agreeable feeling' occasioned by the degree of heat? Either will do;\nand language would lose most of its esthetic and rhetorical value were\nwe forbidden to project words primarily connoting our affections upon\nthe objects by which the affections are aroused. The man is really\nhateful; the action really mean; the situation really tragic--all in\nthemselves and quite apart from our opinion. We even go so far as to\ntalk of a weary road, a giddy height, a jocund morning or a sullen sky;\nand the term 'indefinite' while usually applied only to our\napprehensions, functions as a fundamental physical qualification of\nthings in Spencer's 'law of evolution,' and doubtless passes with most\nreaders for all right.\n\nPsychologists, studying our perceptions of movement, have unearthed\nexperiences in which movement is felt in general but not ascribed\ncorrectly to the body that really moves. Thus in optical vertigo, caused\nby unconscious movements of our eyes, both we and the external universe\nappear to be in a whirl. When clouds float by the moon, it is as if both\nclouds and moon and we ourselves shared in the motion. In the\nextraordinary case of amnesia of the Rev. Mr. Hanna, published by Sidis\nand Goodhart in their important work on _Multiple Personality_, we read\nthat when the patient first recovered consciousness and \"noticed an\nattendant walk across the room, he identified the movement with that of\nhis own. He did not yet discriminate between his own movements and those\noutside himself.\"[79] Such experiences point to a primitive stage of\nperception in which discriminations afterwards needful have not yet been\nmade. A piece of experience of a determinate sort is there, but there at\nfirst as a 'pure' fact. Motion originally simply _is_; only later is it\nconfined to this thing or to that. Something like this is true of every\nexperience, however complex, at the moment of its actual presence. Let\nthe reader arrest himself in the act of reading this article now. _Now_\nthis is a pure experience, a phenomenon, or datum, a mere _that_ or\ncontent of fact. _'Reading' simply is, is there_; and whether there for\nsome one's consciousness, or there for physical nature, is a question\nnot yet put. At the moment, it is there for neither; later we shall\nprobably judge it to have been there for both.\n\nWith the affectional experiences which we are considering, the\nrelatively 'pure' condition lasts. In practical life no urgent need has\nyet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously mental or as\nrigorously physical facts. So they remain equivocal; and, as the world\ngoes, their equivocality is one of their great conveniences.\n\nThe shifting place of 'secondary qualities' in the history of\nphilosophy[80] is another excellent proof of the fact that 'inner' and\n'outer' are not coefficients with which experiences come to us\naboriginally stamped, but are rather results of a later classification\nperformed by us for particular needs. The common-sense stage of thought\nis a perfectly definite practical halting-place, the place where we\nourselves can proceed to act unhesitatingly. On this stage of thought\nthings act on each other as well as on us by means of their secondary\nqualities. Sound, as such, goes through the air and can be intercepted.\nThe heat of the fire passes over, as such, into the water which it sets\na-boiling. It is the very light of the arc-lamp which displaces the\ndarkness of the midnight street, etc. By engendering and translocating\njust these qualities, actively efficacious as they seem to be, we\nourselves succeed in altering nature so as to suit us; and until more\npurely intellectual, as distinguished from practical, needs had arisen,\nno one ever thought of calling these qualities subjective. When,\nhowever, Galileo, Descartes, and others found it best for philosophic\npurposes to class sound, heat, and light along with pain and pleasure as\npurely mental phenomena, they could do so with impunity.[81]\n\nEven the primary qualities are undergoing the same fate. Hardness and\nsoftness are effects on us of atomic interactions, and the atoms\nthemselves are neither hard nor soft, nor solid nor liquid. Size and\nshape are deemed subjective by Kantians; time itself is subjective\naccording to many philosophers;[82] and even the activity and causal\nefficacy which lingered in physics long after secondary qualities were\nbanished are now treated as illusory projections outwards of phenomena\nof our own consciousness. There are no activities or effects in nature,\nfor the most intellectual contemporary school of physical speculation.\nNature exhibits only _changes_, which habitually coincide with one\nanother so that their habits are describable in simple 'laws.'[83]\n\nThere is no original spirituality or materiality of being, intuitively\ndiscerned, then; but only a translocation of experiences from one world\nto another; a grouping of them with one set or another of associates for\ndefinitely practical or intellectual ends.\n\nI will say nothing here of the persistent ambiguity of _relations_. They\nare undeniable parts of pure experience; yet, while common sense and\nwhat I call radical empiricism stand for their being objective, both\nrationalism and the usual empiricism claim that they are exclusively the\n'work of the mind'--the finite mind or the absolute mind, as the case\nmay be.\n\n * * * * *\n\nTurn now to those affective phenomena which more directly concern us.\n\nWe soon learn to separate the ways in which things appeal to our\ninterests and emotions from the ways in which they act upon one another.\nIt does not _work_ to assume that physical objects are going to act\noutwardly by their sympathetic or antipathetic qualities. The beauty of\na thing or its value is no force that can be plotted in a polygon of\ncompositions, nor does its 'use' or 'significance' affect in the\nminutest degree its vicissitudes or destiny at the hands of physical\nnature. Chemical 'affinities' are a purely verbal metaphor; and, as I\njust said, even such things as forces, tensions, and activities can at a\npinch be regarded as anthropomorphic projections. So far, then, as the\nphysical world means the collection of contents that determine in each\nother certain regular changes, the whole collection of our appreciative\nattributes has to be treated as falling outside of it. If we mean by\nphysical nature whatever lies beyond the surface of our bodies, these\nattributes are inert throughout the whole extent of physical nature.\n\nWhy then do men leave them as ambiguous as they do, and not class them\ndecisively as purely spiritual?\n\nThe reason would seem to be that, although they are inert as regards the\nrest of physical nature, they are not inert as regards that part of\nphysical nature which our own skin covers. It is those very appreciative\nattributes of things, their dangerousness, beauty, rarity, utility,\netc., that primarily appeal to our attention. In our commerce with\nnature these attributes are what give _emphasis_ to objects; and for an\nobject to be emphatic, whatever spiritual fact it may mean, means also\nthat it produces immediate bodily effects upon us, alterations of tone\nand tension, of heart-beat and breathing, of vascular and visceral\naction. The 'interesting' aspects of things are thus not wholly inert\nphysically, though they be active only in these small corners of\nphysical nature which our bodies occupy. That, however, is enough to\nsave them from being classed as absolutely non-objective.\n\nThe attempt, if any one should make it, to sort experiences into two\nabsolutely discrete groups, with nothing but inertness in one of them\nand nothing but activities in the other, would thus receive one check.\nIt would receive another as soon as we examined the more distinctively\nmental group; for though in that group it be true that things do not act\non one another by their physical properties, do not dent each other or\nset fire to each other, they yet act on each other in the most energetic\nway by those very characters which are so inert extracorporeally. It is\nby the interest and importance that experiences have for us, by the\nemotions they excite, and the purposes they subserve, by their affective\nvalues, in short, that their consecution in our several conscious\nstreams, as 'thoughts' of ours, is mainly ruled. Desire introduces them;\ninterest holds them; fitness fixes their order and connection. I need\nonly refer for this aspect of our mental life, to Wundt's article 'Ueber\npsychische Causalitaet,' which begins Volume X. of his _Philosophische\nStudien_.[84]\n\nIt thus appears that the ambiguous or amphibious _status_ which we find\nour epithets of value occupying is the most natural thing in the world.\nIt would, however, be an unnatural status if the popular opinion which I\ncited at the outset were correct. If 'physical' and 'mental' meant two\ndifferent kinds of intrinsic nature, immediately, intuitively, and\ninfallibly discernible, and each fixed forever in whatever bit of\nexperience it qualified, one does not see how there could ever have\narisen any room for doubt or ambiguity. But if, on the contrary, these\nwords are words of sorting, ambiguity is natural. For then, as soon as\nthe relations of a thing are sufficiently various it can be sorted\nvariously. Take a mass of carrion, for example, and the\n'disgustingness' which for us is part of the experience. The sun\ncaresses it, and the zephyr wooes it as if it were a bed of roses. So\nthe disgustingness fails to _operate_ within the realm of suns and\nbreezes,--it does not function as a physical quality. But the carrion\n'turns our stomach' by what seems a direct operation--it _does_ function\nphysically, therefore, in that limited part of physics. We can treat it\nas physical or as non-physical according as we take it in the narrower\nor in the wider context, and conversely, of course, we must treat it as\nnon-mental or as mental.\n\nOur body itself is the palmary instance of the ambiguous. Sometimes I\ntreat my body purely as a part of outer nature. Sometimes, again, I\nthink of it as 'mine,' I sort it with the 'me,' and then certain local\nchanges and determinations in it pass for spiritual happenings. Its\nbreathing is my 'thinking,' its sensorial adjustments are my\n'attention,' its kinesthetic alterations are my 'efforts,' its visceral\nperturbations are my 'emotions.' The obstinate controversies that have\narisen over such statements as these (which sound so paradoxical, and\nwhich can yet be made so seriously) prove how hard it is to decide by\nbare introspection what it is in experiences that shall make them either\nspiritual or material. It surely can be nothing intrinsic in the\nindividual experience. It is their way of behaving towards each other,\ntheir system of relations, their function; and all these things vary\nwith the context in which we find it opportune to consider them.\n\nI think I may conclude, then (and I hope that my readers are now ready\nto conclude with me), that the pretended spirituality of our emotions\nand of our attributes of value, so far from proving an objection to the\nphilosophy of pure experience, does, when rightly discussed and\naccounted for, serve as one of its best corroborations.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[75] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 11, May 25, 1905.]\n\n[76] It will be still better if he shall have also read the [essay]\nentitled 'A World of Pure Experience,' which follows [the first] and\ndevelops its ideas still farther.\n\n[77] [Cf. _The Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXV; and \"The\nPhysical Basis of Emotion,\" _The Psychological Review_, vol. I, 1894, p.\n516.]\n\n[78] [See above, pp. 34, 35.]\n\n[79] Page 102.\n\n[80] [Cf. Janet and Seailles: _History of the Problems of Philosophy_,\ntrans. by Monahan, part I, ch. III.]\n\n[81] [Cf. Descartes: _Meditation_ II; _Principles of Philosophy_, part\nI, XLVIII.]\n\n[82] [Cf. A. E. Taylor: _Elements of Metaphysics_, bk. III, ch. IV.]\n\n[83] [Cf. K. Pearson: _Grammar of Science_, ch. III.]\n\n[84] It is enough for my present purpose if the appreciative characters\nbut _seem_ to act thus. Believers in an activity _an sich_, other than\nour mental experiences of activity, will find some farther reflections\non the subject in my address on 'The Experience of Activity.' [The next\nessay. Cf. especially, p. 169. ED.]\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY[85]\n\n\nBRETHREN OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION:\n\nIn casting about me for a subject for your President this year to talk\nabout it has seemed to me that our experiences of activity would form a\ngood one; not only because the topic is so naturally interesting, and\nbecause it has lately led to a good deal of rather inconclusive\ndiscussion, but because I myself am growing more and more interested in\na certain systematic way of handling questions, and want to get others\ninterested also, and this question strikes me as one in which, although\nI am painfully aware of my inability to communicate new discoveries or\nto reach definitive conclusions, I yet can show, in a rather definite\nmanner, how the method works.\n\nThe way of handling things I speak of, is, as you already will have\nsuspected, that known sometimes as the pragmatic method, sometimes as\nhumanism, sometimes as Deweyism, and in France, by some of the disciples\nof Bergson, as the Philosophie nouvelle. Professor Woodbridge's _Journal\nof Philosophy_[86] seems unintentionally to have become a sort of\nmeeting place for those who follow these tendencies in America. There is\nonly a dim identity among them; and the most that can be said at present\nis that some sort of gestation seems to be in the atmosphere, and that\nalmost any day a man with a genius for finding the right word for things\nmay hit upon some unifying and conciliating formula that will make so\nmuch vaguely similar aspiration crystallize into more definite form.\n\nI myself have given the name of 'radical empiricism' to that version of\nthe tendency in question which I prefer; and I propose, if you will now\nlet me, to illustrate what I mean by radical empiricism, by applying it\nto activity as an example, hoping at the same time incidentally to\nleave the general problem of activity in a slightly--I fear very\nslightly--more manageable shape than before.\n\nMr. Bradley calls the question of activity a scandal to philosophy, and\nif one turns to the current literature of the subject--his own writings\nincluded--one easily gathers what he means. The opponents cannot even\nunderstand one another. Mr. Bradley says to Mr. Ward: \"I do not care\nwhat your oracle is, and your preposterous psychology may here be gospel\nif you please; ... but if the revelation does contain a meaning, I will\ncommit myself to this: either the oracle is so confused that its\nsignification is not discoverable, or, upon the other hand, if it can be\npinned down to any definite statement, then that statement will be\nfalse.\"[87] Mr. Ward in turn says of Mr. Bradley: \"I cannot even imagine\nthe state of mind to which his description applies.... [It] reads like\nan unintentional travesty of Herbartian psychology by one who has tried\nto improve upon it without being at the pains to master it.\"[88]\nMuensterberg excludes a view opposed to his own by saying that with any\none who holds it a _Verstaendigung_ with him is \"_grundsaetzlich\nausgeschlossen_\"; and Royce, in a review of Stout,[89] hauls him over\nthe coals at great length for defending 'efficacy' in a way which I, for\none, never gathered from reading him, and which I have heard Stout\nhimself say was quite foreign to the intention of his text.\n\nIn these discussions distinct questions are habitually jumbled and\ndifferent points of view are talked of _durcheinander_.\n\n(1) There is a psychological question: \"Have we perceptions of activity?\nand if so, what are they like, and when and where do we have them?\"\n\n(2) There is a metaphysical question: \"Is there a _fact_ of activity?\nand if so, what idea must we frame of it? What is it like? and what\ndoes it do, if it does anything?\" And finally there is a logical\nquestion:\n\n(3) \"Whence do we _know_ activity? By our own feelings of it solely? or\nby some other source of information?\" Throughout page after page of the\nliterature one knows not which of these questions is before one; and\nmere description of the surface-show of experience is proferred as if it\nimplicitly answered every one of them. No one of the disputants,\nmoreover, tries to show what pragmatic consequences his own view would\ncarry, or what assignable particular differences in any one's experience\nit would make if his adversary's were triumphant.\n\nIt seems to me that if radical empiricism be good for anything, it\nought, with its pragmatic method and its principle of pure experience,\nto be able to avoid such tangles, or at least to simplify them somewhat.\nThe pragmatic method starts from the postulate that there is no\ndifference of truth that doesn't make a difference of fact somewhere;\nand it seeks to determine the meaning of all differences of opinion by\nmaking the discussion hinge as soon as possible upon some practical or\nparticular issue. The principle of pure experience is also a methodical\npostulate. Nothing shall be admitted as fact, it says, except what can\nbe experienced at some definite time by some experient; and for every\nfeature of fact ever so experienced, a definite place must be found\nsomewhere in the final system of reality. In other words: Everything\nreal must be experienceable somewhere, and every kind of thing\nexperienced must somewhere be real.\n\nArmed with these rules of method let us see what face the problems of\nactivity present to us.\n\nBy the principle of pure experience, either the word 'activity' must\nhave no meaning at all, or else the original type and model of what it\nmeans must lie in some concrete kind of experience that can be\ndefinitely pointed out. Whatever ulterior judgments we may eventually\ncome to make regarding activity, _that sort_ of thing will be what the\njudgments are about. The first step to take, then, is to ask where in\nthe stream of experience we seem to find what we speak of as activity.\nWhat we are to think of the activity thus found will be a later\nquestion.\n\nNow it is obvious that we are tempted to affirm activity wherever we\nfind anything _going on_. Taken in the broadest sense, any apprehension\nof something _doing_, is an experience of activity. Were our world\ndescribable only by the words 'nothing happening,' 'nothing changing,'\n'nothing doing,' we should unquestionably call it an 'inactive' world.\nBare activity then, as we may call it, means the bare fact of event or\nchange. 'Change taking place' is a unique content of experience, one of\nthose 'conjunctive' objects which radical empiricism seeks so earnestly\nto rehabilitate and preserve. The sense of activity is thus in the\nbroadest and vaguest way synonymous with the sense of 'life.' We should\nfeel our own subjective life at least, even in noticing and proclaiming\nan otherwise inactive world. Our own reaction on its monotony would be\nthe one thing experienced there in the form of something coming to\npass.\n\nThis seems to be what certain writers have in mind when they insist that\nfor an experient to be at all is to be active. It seems to justify, or\nat any rate to explain, Mr. Ward's expression that we _are_ only as we\nare active,[90] for we _are_ only as experients; and it rules out Mr.\nBradley's contention that \"there is no original experience of anything\nlike activity.\"[91] What we ought to say about activities thus\nelementary, whose they are, what they effect, or whether indeed they\neffect anything at all--these are later questions, to be answered only\nwhen the field of experience is enlarged.\n\nBare activity would thus be predicable, though there were no definite\ndirection, no actor, and no aim. Mere restless zigzag movement, or a\nwild _Ideenflucht_, or _Rhapsodie der Wahrnehmungen_, as Kant would\nsay,[92] would constitute an active as distinguished from an inactive\nworld.\n\nBut in this actual world of ours, as it is given, a part at least of\nthe activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire and\nsense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it\novercomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of\nresistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like\nthese that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed\nto activity arise. Here also the notion of causal efficacy comes to\nbirth. Perhaps the most elaborate work ever done in descriptive\npsychology has been the analysis by various recent writers of the more\ncomplex activity-situations.[93] In their descriptions, exquisitely\nsubtle some of them,[94] the activity appears as the _gestaltqualitaet_\nor the _fundirte inhalt_ (or as whatever else you may please to call\nthe conjunctive form) which the content falls into when we experience\nit in the ways which the describers set forth. Those factors in those\nrelations are what we mean by activity-situations; and to the possible\nenumeration and accumulation of their circumstances and ingredients\nthere would seem to be no natural bound. Every hour of human life\ncould contribute to the picture gallery; and this is the only fault\nthat one can find with such descriptive industry--where is it going to\nstop? Ought we to listen forever to verbal pictures of what we have\nalready in concrete form in our own breasts?[95] They never take us\noff the superficial plane. We knew the facts already--less spread out\nand separated, to be sure--but we knew them still. We always felt our\nown activity, for example, as 'the expansion of an idea with which our\nSelf is identified, against an obstacle';[96] and the following out of\nsuch a definition through a multitude of cases elaborates the obvious\nso as to be little more than an exercise in synonymic speech.\n\nAll the descriptions have to trace familiar outlines, and to use\nfamiliar terms. The activity is, for example, attributed either to a\nphysical or to a mental agent, and is either aimless or directed. If\ndirected it shows tendency. The tendency may or may not be resisted. If\nnot, we call the activity immanent, as when a body moves in empty space\nby its momentum, or our thoughts wander at their own sweet will. If\nresistance is met, _its_ agent complicates the situation. If now, in\nspite of resistance, the original tendency continues, effort makes its\nappearance, and along with effort, strain or squeeze. Will, in the\nnarrower sense of the word, then comes upon the scene, whenever, along\nwith the tendency, the strain and squeeze are sustained. But the\nresistance may be great enough to check the tendency, or even to reverse\nits path. In that case, we (if 'we' were the original agents or subjects\nof the tendency) are overpowered. The phenomenon turns into one of\ntension simply, or of necessity succumbed-to, according as the opposing\npower is only equal, or is superior to ourselves.\n\nWhosoever describes an experience in such terms as these describes an\nexperience _of_ activity. If the word have any meaning, it must denote\nwhat there is found. _There_ is complete activity in its original and\nfirst intention. What it is 'known-as' is what there appears. The\nexperiencer of such a situation possesses all that the idea contains. He\nfeels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the triumph, or\nthe passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the space, the\nswiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and color, the pain and\npleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining characters the situation\nmay involve. He goes through all that ever can be imagined where\nactivity is supposed. If we suppose activities to go on outside of our\nexperience, it is in forms like these that we must suppose them, or else\ngive them some other name; for the word 'activity' has no imaginable\ncontent whatever save these experiences of process, obstruction,\nstriving, strain, or release, ultimate _qualia_ as they are of the life\ngiven us to be known.\n\nWere this the end of the matter, one might think that whenever we had\nsuccessfully lived through an activity-situation we should have to be\npermitted, without provoking contradiction, to say that we had been\nreally active, that we had met real resistance and had really prevailed.\nLotze somewhere says that to be an entity all that is necessary is to\n_gelten_ as an entity, to operate, or be felt, experienced, recognized,\nor in any way realized, as such.[97] In our activity-experiences the\nactivity assuredly fulfils Lotze's demand. It makes itself _gelten_. It\nis witnessed at its work. No matter what activities there may really be\nin this extraordinary universe of ours, it is impossible for us to\nconceive of any one of them being either lived through or authentically\nknown otherwise than in this dramatic shape of something sustaining a\nfelt purpose against felt obstacles and overcoming or being overcome.\nWhat 'sustaining' means here is clear to anyone who has lived through\nthe experience, but to no one else; just as 'loud,' 'red,' 'sweet,' mean\nsomething only to beings with ears, eyes, and tongues. The _percipi_ in\nthese originals of experience is the _esse_; the curtain is the picture.\nIf there is anything hiding in the background, it ought not to be called\nactivity, but should get itself another name.\n\nThis seems so obviously true that one might well experience astonishment\nat finding so many of the ablest writers on the subject flatly denying\nthat the activity we live through in these situations is real. Merely to\nfeel active is not to be active, in their sight. The agents that appear\nin the experience are not real agents, the resistances do not really\nresist, the effects that appear are not really effects at all.[98] It\nis evident from this that mere descriptive analysis of any one of our\nactivity-experiences is not the whole story, that there is something\nstill to tell _about_ them that has led such able writers to conceive of\na _Simon-pure_ activity, of an activity _an sich_, that does, and\ndoesn't merely appear to us to do, and compared with whose real doing\nall this phenomenal activity is but a specious sham.\n\nThe metaphysical question opens here; and I think that the state of mind\nof one possessed by it is often something like this: \"It is all very\nwell,\" we may imagine him saying, \"to talk about certain\nexperience-series taking on the form of feelings of activity, just as\nthey might take on musical or geometric forms. Suppose that they do so;\nsuppose we feel a will to stand a strain. Does our feeling do more than\n_record_ the fact that the strain is sustained? The _real_ activity,\nmeanwhile, is the _doing_ of the fact; and what is the doing made of\nbefore the record is made. What in the will _enables_ it to act thus?\nAnd these trains of experience themselves, in which activities appear,\nwhat makes them _go_ at all? Does the activity in one bit of experience\nbring the next bit into being? As an empiricist you cannot say so, for\nyou have just declared activity to be only a kind of synthetic object,\nor conjunctive relation experienced between bits of experience already\nmade. But what made them at all? What propels experience _ueberhaupt_\ninto being? _There_ is the activity that _operates_; the activity _felt_\nis only its superficial sign.\"\n\nTo the metaphysical question, popped upon us in this way, I must pay\nserious attention ere I end my remarks; but, before doing so, let me\nshow that without leaving the immediate reticulations of experience, or\nasking what makes activity itself act, we still find the distinction\nbetween less real and more real activities forced upon us, and are\ndriven to much soul-searching on the purely phenomenal plane.\n\nWe must not forget, namely, in talking of the ultimate character of our\nactivity-experiences, that each of them is but a portion of a wider\nworld, one link in the vast chain of processes of experience out of\nwhich history is made. Each partial process, to him who lives through\nit, defines itself by its origin and its goal; but to an observer with\na wider mind-span who should live outside of it, that goal would appear\nbut as a provisional halting-place, and the subjectively felt activity\nwould be seen to continue into objective activities that led far beyond.\nWe thus acquire a habit, in discussing activity-experiences, of defining\nthem by their relation to something more. If an experience be one of\nnarrow span, it will be mistaken as to what activity it is and whose.\nYou think that _you_ are acting while you are only obeying someone's\npush. You think you are doing _this_, but you are doing something of\nwhich you do not dream. For instance, you think you are but drinking\nthis glass; but you are really creating the liver-cirrhosis that will\nend your days. You think you are just driving this bargain, but, as\nStevenson says somewhere, you are laying down a link in the policy of\nmankind.\n\nGenerally speaking, the onlooker, with his wider field of vision,\nregards the _ultimate outcome_ of an activity as what it is more really\ndoing; and _the most previous agent_ ascertainable, being the first\nsource of action, he regards as the most real agent in the field. The\nothers but transmit that agent's impulse; on him we put responsibility;\nwe name him when one asks us 'Who's to blame?'\n\nBut the most previous agents ascertainable, instead of being of longer\nspan, are often of much shorter span than the activity in view.\nBrain-cells are our best example. My brain-cells are believed to excite\neach other from next to next (by contiguous transmission of katabolic\nalteration, let us say) and to have been doing so long before this\npresent stretch of lecturing-activity on my part began. If any one\ncell-group stops its activity, the lecturing will cease or show disorder\nof form. _Cessante causa, cessat et effectus_--does not this look as if\nthe short-span brain activities were the more real activities, and the\nlecturing activities on my part only their effects? Moreover, as Hume so\nclearly pointed out,[99] in my mental activity-situation the words\nphysically to be uttered are represented as the activity's immediate\ngoal. These words, however, cannot be uttered without intermediate\nphysical processes in the bulb and vagi nerves, which processes\nnevertheless fail to figure in the mental activity-series at all. That\nseries, therefore, since it leaves out vitally real steps of action,\ncannot represent the real activities. It is something purely subjective;\nthe _facts_ of activity are elsewhere. They are something far more\ninterstitial, so to speak, than what my feelings record.\n\nThe _real_ facts of activity that have in point of fact been\nsystematically pleaded for by philosophers have, so far as my\ninformation goes, been of three principal types.\n\nThe first type takes a consciousness of wider time-span than ours to be\nthe vehicle of the more real activity. Its will is the agent, and its\npurpose is the action done.\n\nThe second type assumes that 'ideas' struggling with one another are the\nagents, and that the prevalence of one set of them is the action.\n\nThe third type believes that nerve-cells are the agents, and that\nresultant motor discharges are the acts achieved.\n\nNow if we must de-realize our immediately felt activity-situations for\nthe benefit of either of these types of substitute, we ought to know\nwhat the substitution practically involves. _What practical difference\nought it to make if_, instead of saying naively that 'I' am active now\nin delivering this address, I say that _a wider thinker is active_, or\nthat _certain ideas are active_, or that _certain nerve-cells are\nactive_, in producing the result?\n\nThis would be the pragmatic meaning of the three hypotheses. Let us take\nthem in succession in seeking a reply.\n\nIf we assume a wider thinker, it is evident that his purposes envelope\nmine. I am really lecturing _for_ him; and although I cannot surely know\nto what end, yet if I take him religiously, I can trust it to be a good\nend, and willingly connive. I can be happy in thinking that my activity\ntransmits his impulse, and that his ends prolong my own. So long as I\ntake him religiously, in short, he does not de-realize my activities.\nHe tends rather to corroborate the reality of them, so long as I believe\nboth them and him to be good.\n\nWhen now we turn to ideas, the case is different, inasmuch as ideas are\nsupposed by the association psychology to influence each other only from\nnext to next. The 'span' of an idea or pair of ideas, is assumed to be\nmuch smaller instead of being larger than that of my total conscious\nfield. The same results may get worked out in both cases, for this\naddress is being given anyhow. But the ideas supposed to 'really' work\nit out had no prevision of the whole of it; and if I was lecturing for\nan absolute thinker in the former case, so, by similar reasoning, are my\nideas now lecturing for me, that is, accomplishing unwittingly a result\nwhich I approve and adopt. But, when this passing lecture is over, there\nis nothing in the bare notion that ideas have been its agents that would\nseem to guarantee that my present purposes in lecturing will be\nprolonged. _I_ may have ulterior developments in view; but there is no\ncertainty that my ideas as such will wish to, or be able to, work them\nout.\n\nThe like is true if nerve-cells be the agents. The activity of a\nnerve-cell must be conceived of as a tendency of exceedingly short\nreach, an 'impulse' barely spanning the way to the next cell--for surely\nthat amount of actual 'process' must be 'experienced' by the cells if\nwhat happens between them is to deserve the name of activity at all. But\nhere again the gross resultant, as _I_ perceive it, is indifferent to\nthe agents, and neither wished or willed or foreseen. Their being agents\nnow congruous with my will gives me no guarantee that like results will\nrecur again from their activity. In point of fact, all sorts of other\nresults do occur. My mistakes, impotencies, perversions, mental\nobstructions, and frustrations generally, are also results of the\nactivity of cells. Although these are letting me lecture now, on other\noccasions they make me do things that I would willingly not do.\n\nThe question _Whose is the real activity?_ is thus tantamount to the\nquestion _What will be the actual results?_ Its interest is dramatic;\nhow will things work out? If the agents are of one sort, one way; if of\nanother sort, they may work out very differently. The pragmatic meaning\nof the various alternatives, in short, is great. It makes no merely\nverbal difference which opinion we take up.\n\nYou see it is the old dispute come back! Materialism and teleology;\nelementary short-span actions summing themselves 'blindly,' or far\nforeseen ideals coming with effort into act.\n\nNaively we believe, and humanly and dramatically we like to believe,\nthat activities both of wider and of narrower span are at work in life\ntogether, that both are real, and that the long-span tendencies yoke the\nothers in their service, encouraging them in the right direction, and\ndamping them when they tend in other ways. But how to represent clearly\nthe _modus operandi_ of such steering of small tendencies by large ones\nis a problem which metaphysical thinkers will have to ruminate upon for\nmany years to come. Even if such control should eventually grow clearly\npicturable, the question how far it is successfully exerted in this\nactual world can be answered only by investigating the details of fact.\nNo philosophic knowledge of the general nature and constitution of\ntendencies, or of the relation of larger to smaller ones, can help us to\npredict which of all the various competing tendencies that interest us\nin this universe are likeliest to prevail. We know as an empirical fact\nthat far-seeing tendencies often carry out their purpose, but we know\nalso that they are often defeated by the failure of some contemptibly\nsmall process on which success depends. A little thrombus in a\nstatesman's meningeal artery will throw an empire out of gear. I can\ntherefore not even hint at any solution of the pragmatic issue. I have\nonly wished to show you that that issue is what gives the real interest\nto all inquiries into what kinds of activity may be real. Are the forces\nthat really act in the world more foreseeing or more blind? As between\n'our' activities as 'we' experience them, and those of our ideas, or of\nour brain-cells, the issue is well-defined.\n\nI said a while back[100] that I should return to the 'metaphysical'\nquestion before ending; so, with a few words about that, I will now\nclose my remarks.\n\nIn whatever form we hear this question propounded, I think that it\nalways arises from two things, a belief that _causality_ must be exerted\nin activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made. If we take an\nactivity-situation at its face-value, it seems as if we caught _in\nflagrante delicto_ the very power that makes facts come and be. I now am\neagerly striving, for example, to get this truth which I seem half to\nperceive, into words which shall make it show more clearly. If the words\ncome, it will seem as if the striving itself had drawn or pulled them\ninto actuality out from the state of merely possible being in which they\nwere. How is this feat performed? How does the pulling _pull_? How do I\nget my hold on words not yet existent, and when they come by what means\nhave I _made_ them come? Really it is the problem of creation; for in\nthe end the question is: How do I make them _be_? Real activities are\nthose that really make things be, without which the things are not, and\nwith which they are there. Activity, so far as we merely feel it, on the\nother hand, is only an impression of ours, it may be maintained; and an\nimpression is, for all this way of thinking, only a shadow of another\nfact.\n\nArrived at this point, I can do little more than indicate the principles\non which, as it seems to me, a radically empirical philosophy is obliged\nto rely in handling such a dispute.\n\nIf there _be_ real creative activities in being, radical empiricism\nmust say, somewhere they must be immediately lived. Somewhere the\n_that_ of efficacious causing and the _what_ of it must be experienced\nin one, just as the what and the that of 'cold' are experienced in one\nwhenever a man has the sensation of cold here and now. It boots not to\nsay that our sensations are fallible. They are indeed; but to see the\nthermometer contradict us when we say 'it is cold' does not abolish\ncold as a specific nature from the universe. Cold is in the arctic\ncircle if not here. Even so, to feel that our train is moving when the\ntrain beside our window moves, to see the moon through a telescope\ncome twice as near, or to see two pictures as one solid when we look\nthrough a stereoscope at them, leaves motion, nearness, and solidity\nstill in being--if not here, yet each in its proper seat elsewhere.\nAnd wherever the seat of real causality _is_, as ultimately known 'for\ntrue' (in nerve-processes, if you will, that cause our feelings of\nactivity as well as the movements which these seem to prompt), a\nphilosophy of pure experience can consider the real causation as no\nother _nature_ of thing than that which even in our most erroneous\nexperiences appears to be at work. Exactly what appears there is what\nwe _mean_ by working, though we may later come to learn that working\nwas not exactly _there_. Sustaining, persevering, striving, paying\nwith effort as we go, hanging on, and finally achieving our\nintention--this _is_ action, this _is_ effectuation in the only shape\nin which, by a pure experience-philosophy, the whereabouts of it\nanywhere can be discussed. Here is creation in its first intention,\nhere is causality at work.[101] To treat this offhand as the bare\nillusory surface of a world whose real causality is an unimaginable\nontological principle hidden in the cubic deeps, is, for the more\nempirical way of thinking, only animism in another shape. You explain\nyour given fact by your 'principle,' but the principle itself, when\nyou look clearly at it, turns out to be nothing but a previous little\nspiritual copy of the fact. Away from that one and only kind of fact\nyour mind, considering causality, can never get.[102]\n\nI conclude, then, that real effectual causation as an ultimate nature,\nas a 'category,' if you like, of reality, is _just what we feel it to\nbe_, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series reveal.\nWe have the whole butt and being of it in our hands; and the healthy\nthing for philosophy is to leave off grubbing underground for what\neffects effectuation, or what makes action act, and to try to solve the\nconcrete questions of where effectuation in this world is located, of\nwhich things are the true causal agents there, and of what the more\nremote effects consist.\n\nFrom this point of view the greater sublimity traditionally attributed\nto the metaphysical inquiry, the grubbing inquiry, entirely disappears.\nIf we could know what causation really and transcendentally is in\nitself, the only _use_ of the knowledge would be to help us to recognize\nan actual cause when we had one, and so to track the future course of\noperations more intelligently out. The mere abstract inquiry into\ncausation's hidden nature is not more sublime than any other inquiry\nequally abstract. Causation inhabits no more sublime level than anything\nelse. It lives, apparently, in the dirt of the world as well as in the\nabsolute, or in man's unconquerable mind. The worth and interest of the\nworld consists not in its elements, be these elements things, or be\nthey the conjunctions of things; it exists rather in the dramatic\noutcome in the whole process, and in the meaning of the succession\nstages which the elements work out.\n\nMy colleague and master, Josiah Royce, in a page of his review of\nStout's _Analytic Psychology_[103] has some fine words on this point\nwith which I cordially agree. I cannot agree with his separating the\nnotion of efficacy from that of activity altogether (this I understand\nto be one contention of his) for activities are efficacious whenever\nthey are real activities at all. But the inner nature both of efficacy\nand of activity are superficial problems, I understand Royce to say; and\nthe only point for us in solving them would be their possible use in\nhelping us to solve the far deeper problem of the course and meaning of\nthe world of life. Life, says our colleague, is full of significance, of\nmeaning, of success and of defeat, of hoping and of striving, of\nlonging, of desire, and of inner value. It is a total presence that\nembodies worth. To live our own lives better in this presence is the\ntrue reason why we wish to know the elements of things; so even we\npsychologists must end on this pragmatic note.\n\nThe urgent problems of activity are thus more concrete. They are all\nproblems of the true relation of longer-span to shorter-span activities.\nWhen, for example, a number of 'ideas' (to use the name traditional in\npsychology) grow confluent in a larger field of consciousness, do the\nsmaller activities still co-exist with the wider activities then\nexperienced by the conscious subject? And, if so, do the wide activities\naccompany the narrow ones inertly, or do they exert control? Or do they\nperhaps utterly supplant and replace them and short-circuit their\neffects? Again, when a mental activity-process and a brain-cell series\nof activities both terminate in the same muscular movement, does the\nmental process steer the neural processes or not? Or, on the other hand,\ndoes it independently short-circuit their effects? Such are the\nquestions that we must begin with. But so far am I from suggesting any\ndefinitive answer to such questions, that I hardly yet can put them\nclearly. They lead, however, into that region of panpsychic and\nontologic speculation of which Professors Bergson and Strong have lately\nenlarged the literature in so able and interesting a way.[104] The\nresults of these authors seem in many respects dissimilar, and I\nunderstand than as yet but imperfectly; but I cannot help suspecting\nthat the direction of their work is very promising, and that they have\nthe hunter's instinct for the fruitful trails.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[85] President's Address before the American Psychological Association,\nPhiladelphia Meeting, December, 1904. [Reprinted from _The Psychological\nReview_, vol. XII, No. 1, Jan., 1905. Also reprinted, with some\nomissions, as Appendix B, _A Pluralistic Universe_, pp. 370-394. Pp.\n166-167 have also been reprinted in _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p.\n212. The present essay is referred to in _ibid._, p. 219, note. The\nauthor's corrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]\n\n[86] [_The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods._]\n\n[87] _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp. 116-117.--Obviously\nwritten _at_ Ward, though Ward's name is not mentioned.\n\n[88] [_Mind_, vol. XII, 1887, pp. 573-574.]\n\n[89] _Mind_, N. S., vol. VI, [1897], p. 379.\n\n[90] _Naturalism and Agnosticism_, vol. II, p. 245. One thinks naturally\nof the peripatetic _actus primus_ and _actus secundus_ here. [\"Actus\nautem est _duplex_: _primus_ et _secundus_. Actus quidem primus est\nforma, et integritas sei. Actus autem secundus est operatio.\" Thomas\nAquinas: _Summa Theologica_, edition of Leo XIII, (1894), vol. I, p.\n391. Cf. also Blanc: _Dictionnaire de Philosophie_, under 'acte.' ED.]\n\n[91] [_Appearance and Reality_, second edition, p. 116.]\n\n[92] [_Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Werke_, (1905), vol. IV, p. 110\n(trans. by Max Mueller, second edition, p. 128).]\n\n[93] I refer to such descriptive work as Ladd's (_Psychology,\nDescriptive and Explanatory_, part I, chap. V, part II, chap. XI, part\nIII, chaps. XXV and XXVI); as Sully's (_The Human Mind_, part V); as\nStout's (_Analytic Psychology_, book I, chap. VI, and book II, chaps. I,\nII, and III); as Bradley's (in his long series of analytic articles on\nPsychology in _Mind_); as Titchener's (_Outline of Psychology_, part I,\nchap. VI); as Shand's (_Mind_, N. S., III, 449; IV, 450; VI, 289); as\nWard's (_Mind_, XII, 67; 564); as Loveday's (_Mind_, N. S., X, 455); as\nLipps's (Vom Fuehlen, Wollen und Denken, 1902, chaps. II, IV, VI); and as\nBergson's (_Revue Philosophique_, LIII, 1)--to mention only a few\nwritings which I immediately recall.\n\n[94] Their existence forms a curious commentary on Prof. Muensterberg's\ndogma that will-attitudes are not describable. He himself has\ncontributed in a superior way to their description, both in his\n_Willenshandlung_, and in his _Grundzuege_ [_der Psychologie_], part II,\nchap. IX, Sec. 7.\n\n[95] I ought myself to cry _peccavi_, having been a voluminous sinner in\nmy own chapter on the will. [_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, chap.\nXXVI.]\n\n[96] [Cf. F. H. Bradley, _Appearance and Reality_, second edition, pp.\n96-97.]\n\n[97] [Cf. above, p. 59, note.]\n\n[98] _Verborum gratia_: \"The feeling of activity is not able, _qua_\nfeeling, to tell us anything about activity\" (Loveday: _Mind_, N. S.,\nvol. X, [1901], p. 463); \"A sensation or feeling or sense _of_ activity\n... is not, looked at in another way, an experience _of_ activity at\nall. It is a mere sensation shut up within which you could by no\nreflection get the idea of activity.... Whether this experience is or is\nnot later on a character essential to our perception and our idea of\nactivity, it, as it comes first, is not in itself an experience of\nactivity at all. It, as it comes first, is only so for extraneous\nreasons and only so for an outside observer\" (Bradley, _Appearance and\nReality_, second edition, p. 605); \"In dem Taetigkeitsgefuehle liegt an\nsich nicht der geringste Beweis fuer das Vorhandensein einer psychischen\nTaetigkeit\" (Muensterberg: _Grundzuege der Psychologie_). I could multiply\nsimilar quotations and would have introduced some of them into my text\nto make it more concrete, save that the mingling of different points of\nview in most of these author's discussions (not in Muensterberg's) make\nit impossible to disentangle exactly what they mean. I am sure in any\ncase, to be accused of misrepresenting them totally, even in this note,\nby omission of the context, so the less I name names and the more I\nstick to abstract characterization of a merely possible style of\nopinion, the safer it will be. And apropos of misunderstandings, I may\nadd to this note a complaint on my own account. Professor Stout, in the\nexcellent chapter on 'Mental Activity,' in vol. I of his _Analytic\nPsychology_, takes me to task for identifying spiritual activity with\ncertain muscular feelings and gives quotations to bear him out. They are\nfrom certain paragraphs on 'the Self,' in which my attempt was to show\nwhat the central nucleus of the activities that we call 'ours' is.\n[_Principles of Psychology_, vol. I, pp. 299-305.] I found it in certain\nintracephalic movements which we habitually oppose, as 'subjective,' to\nthe activities of the transcorporeal world. I sought to show that there\nis no direct evidence that we feel the activity of an inner spiritual\nagent as such (I should now say the activity of 'consciousness' as such,\nsee [the first essay], 'Does Consciousness Exist?'). There are, in fact,\nthree distinguishable 'activities' in the field of discussion: the\nelementary activity involved in the mere _that_ of experience, in the\nfact that _something_ is going on, and the farther specification of this\n_something_ into two _whats_, an activity felt as 'ours,' and an\nactivity ascribed to objects. Stout, as I apprehend him, identifies\n'our' activity with that of the total experience-process, and when I\ncircumscribe it as a part thereof, accuses me of treating it as a sort\nof external appendage to itself (Stout: _op. cit._, vol. I, pp.\n162-163), as if I 'separated the activity from the process which is\nactive.' But all the processes in question are active, and their\nactivity is inseparable from their being. My book raised only the\nquestion of _which_ activity deserved the name of 'ours.' So far as we\nare 'persons,' and contrasted and opposed to an 'environment,' movements\nin our body figure as our activities; and I am unable to find any other\nactivities that are ours in this strictly personal sense. There is a\nwider sense in which the whole 'choir of heaven and furniture of the\nearth,' and their activities, are ours, for they are our 'objects.' But\n'we' are here only another name for the total process of experience,\nanother name for all that is, in fact; and I was dealing with the\npersonal and individualized self exclusively in the passages with which\nProfessor Stout finds fault.\n\nThe individualized self, which I believe to be the only thing properly\ncalled self, is a part of the content of the world experienced. The\nworld experienced (otherwise called the 'field of consciousness')\ncomes at all times with our body as its centre, centre of vision,\ncentre of action, centre of interest. Where the body is is 'here';\nwhen the body acts is 'now'; what the body touches is 'this'; all\nother things are 'there' and 'then' and 'that.' These words of\nemphasized position imply a systematization of things with reference\nto a focus of action and interest which lies in the body; and the\nsystematization is now so instinctive (was it ever not so?) that no\ndeveloped or active experience exists for us at all except in that\nordered form. So far as 'thoughts' and 'feelings' can be active, their\nactivity terminates in the activity of the body, and only through\nfirst arousing its activities can they begin to change those of the\nrest of the world. [Cf. also _A Pluralistic Universe_, p. 344, note 8.\nED.] The body is the storm centre, the origin of co-ordinates, the\nconstant place of stress in all that experience-train. Everything\ncircles round it, and is felt from its point of view. The word 'I,'\nthen, is primarily a noun of position, just like 'this' and 'here.'\nActivities attached to 'this' position have prerogative emphasis, and,\nif activities have feelings, must be felt in a peculiar way. The word\n'my' designates the kind of emphasis. I see no inconsistency whatever\nin defending, on the one hand, 'my' activities as unique and opposed\nto those of outer nature, and, on the other hand, in affirming, after\nintrospection, that they consist in movements in the head. The 'my' of\nthem is the emphasis, the feeling of perspective-interest in which\nthey are dyed.\n\n[99] [_Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_, sect. VII, part I,\nSelby-Bigge's edition, pp. 65 ff.]\n\n[100] Page 172.\n\n[101] Let me not be told that this contradicts [the first essay], 'Does\nConsciousness Exist?' (see especially page 32), in which it was said\nthat while 'thoughts' and 'things' have the same natures, the natures\nwork 'energetically' on each other in the things (fire burns, water\nwets, etc.) but not in the thoughts. Mental activity-trains are composed\nof thoughts, yet their members do work on each other, they check,\nsustain, and introduce. They do so when the activity is merely\nassociational as well as when effort is there. But, and this is my\nreply, they do so by other parts of their nature than those that\nenergize physically. One thought in every developed activity-series is a\ndesire or thought of purpose, and all the other thoughts acquire a\nfeeling tone from their relation of harmony or oppugnancy to this. The\ninterplay of these secondary tones (among which 'interest,'\n'difficulty,' and 'effort' figure) runs the drama in the mental series.\nIn what we term the physical drama these qualities play absolutely no\npart. The subject needs careful working out; but I can see no\ninconsistency.\n\n[102] I have found myself more than once accused in print of being the\nassertor of a metaphysical principle of activity. Since literary\nmisunderstandings retard the settlement of problems, I should like to\nsay that such an interpretation of the pages I have published on Effort\nand on Will is absolutely foreign to what I meant to express.\n[_Principles of Psychology_, vol. II, ch. XXVI.] I owe all my doctrines\non this subject to Renouvier; and Renouvier, as I understand him, is (or\nat any rate then was) an out and out phenomenist, a denier of 'forces'\nin the most strenuous sense. [Cf. Ch. Renouvier: _Esquisse d'une\nClassification Systematique des Doctrines Philosophiques_ (1885), vol.\nII, pp. 390-392; _Essais de Critique Generale_ (1859), vol. II, Secs. ix,\nxiii. For an acknowledgment of the author's general indebtedness to\nRenouvier, cf. _Some Problems of Philosophy_, p. 165, note. ED.] Single\nclauses in my writing, or sentences read out of their connection, may\npossibly have been compatible with a transphenomenal principle of\nenergy; but I defy anyone to show a single sentence which, taken with\nits context, should be naturally held to advocate that view. The\nmisinterpretation probably arose at first from my defending (after\nRenouvier) the indeterminism of our efforts. 'Free will' was supposed by\nmy critics to involve a supernatural agent. As a matter of plain history\nthe only 'free will' I have ever thought of defending is the character\nof novelty in fresh activity-situations. If an activity-process is the\nform of a whole 'field of consciousness,' and if each field of\nconsciousness is not only in its totality unique (as is now commonly\nadmitted) but has its elements unique (since in that situation they are\nall dyed in the total) then novelty is perpetually entering the world\nand what happens there is not pure _repetition_, as the dogma of the\nliteral uniformity of nature requires. Activity-situations come, in\nshort, each with an original touch. A 'principle' of free will if there\nwere one, would doubtless manifest itself in such phenomena, but I never\nsaw, nor do I now see, what the principle could do except rehearse the\nphenomenon beforehand, or why it ever should be invoked.\n\n[103] _Mind_, N. S., vol. VI, 1897; cf. pp. 392-393.\n\n[104] [Cf. _A Pluralistic Universe_, Lect. VI (on Bergson); H. Bergson:\n_Creative Evolution_, trans. by A. Mitchell; C. A. Strong: _Why the Mind\nhas a Body_, ch. XII. ED.]\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nTHE ESSENCE OF HUMANISM[105]\n\n\nHumanism is a ferment that has 'come to stay.'[106] It is not a single\nhypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a\nslow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as\nfrom a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are\nstrongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though\ntheir own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small\nconfusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part\nagainst the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other\nside.[107]\n\nIf humanism really be the name for such a shifting of perspective, it\nis obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in\nsome degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their\nforeground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not\nkeep just the same.[108] If such pervasive consequences be involved in\nhumanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first\nin defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its\nprogress, will be thrown away.\n\nIt suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most\nsystematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary\nprograms only; and its bearing on many vital philosophic problems has\nnot been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance,\nhave showered blows on doctrines--subjectivism and scepticism, for\nexample--that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their\nstill greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed\nthe humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.' It\nis always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view\nauthentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the\nword 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have\nto guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating\nof the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps,\nand it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage\nwhich things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each\nside of its central point of view.\n\nWhoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure\nof what's what and who is who. Anyone can contribute such a definition,\nand, without it, no one knows exactly where he stands. If I offer my own\nprovisional definition of humanism[109] now and here, others may improve\nit, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by\nthe contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general\nopinion may result.\n\n\nI\n\nThe essential service of humanism, as I conceive the situation, is to\nhave seen that _though one part of our experience may lean upon another\npart to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may\nbe considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on\nnothing_.\n\nSince this formula also expresses the main contention of transcendental\nidealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It\nseems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and\npantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would\ndepend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical, it\nwould certainly develop both right-wing and left-wing interpreters. I\nmyself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a\nGod, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of\nwidest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion\nsusceptible of reasoned defence, though I am well aware how many minds\nthere are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been\nmonistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for\nme a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of--it\nbeing essentially a _social_ philosophy, a philosophy of '_co_,' in\nwhich conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it\nis its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the\nstanding 'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil,' 'problem\nof freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and\nparadoxes as well.\n\nIt gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing\nto entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets\nrid of any need for an absolute of the Bradleyan type (avowedly sterile\nfor intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations\nfound within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of\nan absolute of the Roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic\ntreatment of the problem of knowledge [a treatment of which I have\nalready given a version in two very inadequate articles].[110] As the\nviews of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been\nthose so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that\na sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore\nto bring the views which _I_ impute to humanism in these respects into\nfocus as briefly as I can.\n\n\nII\n\nIf the central humanistic thesis, printed above in italics, be accepted,\nit will follow that, if there be any such thing at all as knowing, the\nknower and the object known must both be portions of experience. One\npart of experience must, therefore, either\n\n(1) Know another part of experience--in other words, parts must, as\nProfessor Woodbridge says,[111] represent _one another_ instead of\nrepresenting realities outside of 'consciousness'--this case is that of\nconceptual knowledge; or else\n\n(2) They must simply exist as so many ultimate _thats_ or facts of\nbeing, in the first instance; and then, as a secondary complication, and\nwithout doubling up its entitative single-ness, any one and the same\n_that_ must figure alternately as a thing known and as a knowledge of\nthe thing, by reason of two divergent kinds of context into which, in\nthe general course of experience, it gets woven.[112]\n\nThis second case is that of sense-perception. There is a stage of\nthought that goes beyond common sense, and of it I shall say more\npresently; but the common-sense stage is a perfectly definite\nhalting-place of thought, primarily for purposes of action; and, so long\nas we remain on the common-sense stage of thought, object and subject\n_fuse_ in the fact of 'presentation' or sense-perception--the pen and\nhand which I now _see_ writing, for example, _are_ the physical\nrealities which those words designate. In this case there is no\nself-transcendency implied in the knowing. Humanism, here, is only a\nmore comminuted _Identitaetsphilosophie_.[113]\n\nIn case (1), on the contrary, the representative experience does\ntranscend itself in knowing the other experience that is its object. No\none can talk of the knowledge of the one by the other without seeing\nthem as numerically distinct entities, of which the one lies beyond the\nother and away from it, along some direction and with some interval,\nthat can be definitely named. But, if the talker be a humanist, he must\nalso see this distance-interval concretely and pragmatically, and\nconfess it to consist of other intervening experiences--of possible\nones, at all events, if not of actual. To call my present idea of my\ndog, for example, cognitive of the real dog means that, as the actual\ntissue of experience is constituted, the idea is capable of leading into\na chain of other experiences on my part that go from next to next and\nterminate at last in vivid sense-perceptions of a jumping, barking,\nhairy body. Those _are_ the real dog, the dog's full presence, for my\ncommon sense. If the supposed talker is a profound philosopher, although\nthey may not _be_ the real dog for him, they _mean_ the real dog, are\npractical substitutes for the real dog, as the representation was a\npractical substitute for them, that real dog being a lot of atoms, say,\nor of mind-stuff, that lie _where_ the sense-perceptions lie in his\nexperience as well as in my own.\n\n\nIII\n\nThe philosopher here stands for the stage of thought that goes beyond\nthe stage of common sense; and the difference is simply that he\n'interpolates' and 'extrapolates,' where common sense does not. For\ncommon sense, two men see the same identical real dog. Philosophy,\nnoting actual differences in their perceptions, points out the duality\nof these latter, and interpolates something between them as a more real\nterminus--first, organs, viscera, etc.; next, cells; then, ultimate\natoms; lastly, mind-stuff perhaps. The original sense-termini of the two\nmen, instead of coalescing with each other and with the real dog-object,\nas at first supposed, are thus held by philosophers to be separated by\ninvisible realities with which, at most, they are conterminous.\n\nAbolish, now, one of the percipients, and the interpolation changes into\n'extrapolation.' The sense-terminus of the remaining percipient is\nregarded by the philosopher as not quite reaching reality. He has only\ncarried the procession of experiences, the philosopher thinks, to a\ndefinite, because practical, halting-place somewhere on the way towards\nan absolute truth that lies beyond.\n\nThe humanist sees all the time, however, that there is no absolute\ntranscendency even about the more absolute realities thus conjectured or\nbelieved in. The viscera and cells are only possible percepts following\nupon that of the outer body. The atoms again, though we may never attain\nto human means of perceiving them, are still defined perceptually. The\nmind-stuff itself is conceived as a kind of experience; and it is\npossible to frame the hypothesis (such hypotheses can by no logic be\nexcluded from philosophy) of two knowers of a piece of mind-stuff and\nthe mind-stuff itself becoming 'confluent' at the moment at which our\nimperfect knowing might pass into knowing of a completed type. Even so\ndo you and I habitually represent our two perceptions and the real dog\nas confluent, though only provisionally, and for the common-sense stage\nof thought. If my pen be inwardly made of mind-stuff, there is no\nconfluence _now_ between that mind-stuff and my visual perception of\nthe pen. But conceivably there might come to be such confluence; for, in\nthe case of my hand, the visual sensations and the inward feelings of\nthe hand, its mind-stuff, so to speak, are even now as confluent as any\ntwo things can be.\n\nThere is, thus, no breach in humanistic epistemology. Whether knowledge\nbe taken as ideally perfected, or only as true enough to pass muster for\npractice, it is hung on one continuous scheme. Reality, howsoever\nremote, is always defined as a terminus within the general possibilities\nof experience; and what knows it is defined as an experience _that\n'represents' it, in the sense of being substitutable for it in our\nthinking_ because it leads to the same associates, _or in the sense of\n'pointing to it'_ through a chain of other experiences that either\nintervene or may intervene.\n\nAbsolute reality here bears the same relation to sensation as sensation\nbears to conception or imagination. Both are provisional or final\ntermini, sensation being only the terminus at which the practical man\nhabitually stops, while the philosopher projects a 'beyond' in the\nshape of more absolute reality. These termini, for the practical and the\nphilosophical stages of thought respectively, are self-supporting. They\nare not 'true' of anything else, they simply _are_, are _real_. They\n'lean on nothing,' as my italicized formula said. Rather does the whole\nfabric of experience lean on them, just as the whole fabric of the solar\nsystem, including many relative positions, leans, for its absolute\nposition in space, on any one of its constituent stars. Here, again, one\ngets a new _Identitaetsphilosophie_ in pluralistic form.[114]\n\n\nIV\n\nIf I have succeeded in making this at all clear (though I fear that\nbrevity and abstractness between them may have made me fail), the reader\nwill see that the 'truth' of our mental operations must always be an\nintra-experiential affair. A conception is reckoned true by common sense\nwhen it can be made to lead to a sensation. The sensation, which for\ncommon sense is not so much 'true' as 'real,' is held to be\n_provisionally_ true by the philosopher just in so far as it _covers_\n(abuts at, or occupies the place of) a still more absolutely real\nexperience, in the possibility of which to some remoter experient the\nphilosopher finds reason to believe.\n\nMeanwhile what actually _does_ count for true to any individual trower,\nwhether he be philosopher or common man, is always a result of his\n_apperceptions_. If a novel experience, conceptual or sensible,\ncontradict too emphatically our pre-existent system of beliefs, in\nninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is treated as false. Only when the\nolder and the newer experiences are congruous enough to mutually\napperceive and modify each other, does what we treat as an advance in\ntruth result. [Having written of this point in an article in reply to\nMr. Joseph's criticism of my humanism, I will say no more about truth\nhere, but refer the reader to that review.[115]] In no case, however,\nneed truth consist in a relation between our experiences and something\narchetypal or trans-experiential. Should we ever reach absolutely\nterminal experiences, experiences in which we all agreed, which were\nsuperseded by no revised continuations, these would not be _true_, they\nwould be _real_, they would simply _be_, and be indeed the angles,\ncorners, and linchpins of all reality, on which the truth of everything\nelse would be stayed. Only such _other_ things as led to these by\nsatisfactory conjunctions would be 'true.' Satisfactory connection of\nsome sort with such termini is all that the word 'truth' means. On the\ncommon-sense stage of thought sense-presentations serve as such termini.\nOur ideas and concepts and scientific theories pass for true only so far\nas they harmoniously lead back to the world of sense.\n\nI hope that many humanists will endorse this attempt of mine to trace\nthe more essential features of that way of viewing things. I feel almost\ncertain that Messrs. Dewey and Schiller will do so. If the attackers\nwill also take some slight account of it, it may be that discussion will\nbe a little less wide of the mark than it has hitherto been.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[105] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 5, March 2, 1905. Also reprinted, with\nslight changes in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 121-135. The author's\ncorrections have been adopted for the present text. ED.]\n\n[106] [Written _apropos_ of the appearance of three articles in _Mind_,\nN. S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905: \"'Absolute' and 'Relative'\nTruth,\" H. H. Joachim; \"Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'\" H. W.\nB. Joseph; \"Applied Axioms,\" A. Sidgwick. Of these articles the second\nand third \"continue the humanistic (or pragmatistic) controversy,\" the\nfirst \"deeply connects with it.\" ED.]\n\n[107] Professor Baldwin, for example. His address 'On Selective\nThinking' (_Psychological Review_, [vol. V], 1898, reprinted in his\nvolume, _Development and Evolution_) seems to me an unusually\nwell-written pragmatic manifesto. Nevertheless in 'The Limits of\nPragmatism' (_ibid._, [vol. XI], 1904), he (much less clearly) joins in\nthe attack.\n\n[108] The ethical changes, it seems to me, are beautifully made evident\nin Professor Dewey's series of articles, which will never get the\nattention they deserve till they are printed in a book. I mean: 'The\nSignificance of Emotions,' _Psychological Review_, vol. II, [1895], p.\n13; 'The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology,' _ibid._, vol. III, [1896],\np. 357; 'Psychology and Social Practice,' _ibid._, vol. VII, [1900], p.\n105; 'Interpretation of Savage Mind,' _ibid._, vol. IX, [1902], p. 217;\n'Green's Theory of the Moral Motive,' _Philosophical Review_, vol. I,\n[1892], p. 593; 'Self-realization as the Moral Ideal,' _ibid._, vol. II,\n[1893], p. 652; 'The Psychology of Effort,' _ibid._, vol. VI, [1897], p.\n43; 'The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality,' _ibid._, vol. XI,\n[1902], pp. 107, 353; 'Evolution and Ethics,' _Monist_, vol. VIII,\n[1898], p. 321; to mention only a few.\n\n[109] [The author employs the term 'humanism' either as a synonym for\n'radical empiricism' (cf. _e.g._, above, p. 156); or as that general\nphilosophy of life of which 'radical empiricism' is the theoretical\nground (cf. below, p. 194). For other discussions of 'humanism,' cf.\nbelow, essay XI, and _The Meaning of Truth_, essay III. ED.]\n\n[110] [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning of Truth_. The articles referred\nto are 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of Pure Experience,'\nreprinted above.]\n\n[111] In _Science_, November 4, 1904, p. 599.\n\n[112] This statement is probably excessively obscure to any one who has\nnot read my two articles, 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and 'A World of\nPure Experience.'\n\n[113] [Cf. above, p. 134; and below, p. 202.]\n\n[114] [Cf. above, pp. 134, 197.]\n\n[115] [Omitted from reprint in _Meaning of Truth_. The review referred\nto is reprinted below, pp. 244-265, under the title \"Humanism and Truth\nOnce More.\" ED.]\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nLA NOTION DE CONSCIENCE[116]\n\n\nJe voudrais vous communiquer quelques doutes qui me sont venus au sujet\nde la notion de Conscience qui regne dans tous nos traites de\npsychologie.\n\nOn definit habituellement la Psychologie comme la Science des faits de\nConscience, ou des _phenomenes_, ou encore des _etats_ de la Conscience.\nQu'on admette qu'elle se rattache a des _moi_ personnels, ou bien qu'on\nla croie impersonnelle a la facon du \"moi transcendental\" de Kant, de la\n_Bewusstheit_ ou du _Bewusstsein ueberhaupt_ de nos contemporains en\nAllemagne, cette conscience est toujours regardee comme possedant une\nessence propre, absolument distincte de l'essence des choses\nmaterielles, qu'elle a le don mysterieux de representer et de\nconnaitre. Les faits materiels, pris dans leur materialite, ne sont pas\n_eprouves_, ne sont pas objets _d'experience_, ne se _rapportent_ pas.\nPour qu'ils prennent la forme du systeme dans lequel nous nous sentons\nvivre, il faut qu'ils _apparaissent_, et ce fait d'apparaitre, surajoute\na leur existence brute, s'appelle la conscience que nous en avons, ou\npeut-etre, selon l'hypothese panpsychiste, qu'ils ont d'eux-memes.\n\nVoila ce dualisme invetere qu'il semble impossible de chasser de notre\nvue du monde. Ce monde peut bien exister en soi, mais nous n'en savons\nrien, car pour nous il est exclusivement un objet d'experience; et la\ncondition indispensable a cet effet, c'est qu'il soit rapporte a des\ntemoins, qu'il soit connu par un sujet ou par des sujets spirituels.\nObjet et sujet, voila les deux jambes sans lesquelles il semble que la\nphilosophie ne saurait faire un pas en avant.\n\nToutes les ecoles sont d'accord la-dessus, scolastique, cartesianisme,\nkantisme, neo-kantisme, tous admettent le dualisme fondamental. Le\npositivisme ou agnosticisme de nos jours, qui se pique de relever des\nsciences naturelles, se donne volontiers, il est vrai, le nom de\nmonisme. Mais ce n'est qu'un monisme verbal. Il pose une realite\ninconnue, mais nous dit que cette realite se presente toujours sous deux\n\"aspects,\" un cote conscience et un cote matiere, et ces deux cotes\ndemeurent aussi irreductibles que les attributs fondamentaux, etendue et\npensee, du Dieu de Spinoza. Au fond, le monisme contemporain est du\nspinozisme pur.\n\nOr, comment se represente-t-on cette conscience dont nous sommes tous si\nportes a admettre l'existence? Impossible de la definir, nous dit-on,\nmais nous en avons tous une intuition immediate: tout d'abord la\nconscience a conscience d'elle-meme. Demandez a la premiere personne que\nvous rencontrerez, homme ou femme, psychologue ou ignorant, et elle vous\nrepondra qu'elle _se sent_ penser, jouir, souffrir, vouloir, tout comme\nelle se sent respirer. Elle percoit directement sa vie spirituelle comme\nune espece de courant interieur, actif, leger, fluide, delicat, diaphane\npour ainsi dire, et absolument oppose a quoi que ce soit de materiel.\nBref, la vie subjective ne parait pas seulement etre une condition\nlogiquement indispensable pour qu'il y ait un monde objectif qui\n_apparaisse_, c'est encore un element de l'experience meme que nous\neprouvons directement, au meme titre que nous eprouvons notre propre\ncorps.\n\nIdees et Choses, comment donc ne pas reconnaitre leur dualisme?\nSentiments et Objets, comment douter de leur heterogeneite absolue?\n\nLa psychologie soi-disant scientifique admet cette heterogeneite comme\nl'ancienne psychologie spiritualiste l'admettait. Comment ne pas\nl'admettre? Chaque science decoupe arbitrairement dans la trame des\nfaits un champ ou elle se parque, et dont elle decrit et etudie le\ncontenu. La psychologie prend justement pour son domaine le champ des\nfaits de conscience. Elle les postule sans les critiquer, elle les\noppose aux faits materiels; et sans critiquer non plus la notion de ces\nderniers, elle les rattache a la conscience par le lien mysterieux de la\n_connaissance_, de, l'_aperception_ qui, pour elle, est un troisieme\ngenre de fait fondamental et ultime. En suivant cette voie, la\npsychologie contemporaine a fete de grands triomphes. Elle a pu faire\nune esquisse de l'evolution de la vie consciente, en concevant cette\nderniere comme s'adaptant de plus en plus completement au milieu\nphysique environnant. Elle a pu etablir un parallelisme dans le\ndualisme, celui des faits psychiques et des evenements cerebraux. Elle a\nexplique les illusions, les hallucinations, et jusqu'a un certain point,\nles maladies mentales. Ce sont de beaux progres; mais il reste encore\nbien des problemes. La philosophie generale surtout, qui a pour devoir\nde scruter tous les postulats, trouve des paradoxes et des empechements\nla ou la science passe outre; et il n'y a que les amateurs de science\npopulaire qui ne sont jamais perplexes. Plus on va au fond des choses,\nplus on trouve d'enigmes; et j'avoue pour ma part que depuis que je\nm'occupe serieusement de psychologie, ce vieux dualisme de matiere et de\npensee, cette heterogeneite posee comme absolue des deux essences, m'a\ntoujours presente des difficultes. C'est de quelques-unes de ces\ndifficultes que je voudrais maintenant vous entretenir.\n\nD'abord il y en a une, laquelle, j'en suis convaincu, vous aura frappes\ntous. Prenons la perception exterieure, la sensation directe que nous\ndonnent par exemple les murs de cette salle. Peut-on dire ici que le\npsychique et le physique sont absolument heterogenes? Au contraire, ils\nsont si peu heterogenes que si nous nous placons au point de vue du sens\ncommun; si nous faisons abstraction de toutes les inventions\nexplicatives, des molecules et des ondulations etherees, par exemple,\nqui au fond sont des entites metaphysiques; si, en un mot, nous prenons\nla realite naivement et telle qu'elle nous est donnee tout d'abord,\ncette realite sensible d'ou dependent nos interets vitaux, et sur\nlaquelle se portent toutes nos actions; eh bien, cette realite sensible\net la sensation que nous en avons sont, au moment ou la sensation se\nproduit, absolument identiques l'une a l'autre. La realite est\nl'aperception meme. Les mots \"murs de cette salle\" ne signifient que\ncette blancheur fraiche et sonore qui nous entoure, coupee par ces\nfenetres, bornee par ces lignes et ces angles. Le physique ici n'a pas\nd'autre contenu que le psychique. Le sujet et l'objet se confondent.\n\nC'est Berkeley qui le premier a mis cette verite en honneur. _Esse est\npercipi._ Nos sensations ne sont pas de petits duplicats interieurs des\nchoses, elles sont les choses memes en tant que les choses nous sont\npresentes. Et quoi que l'on veuille penser de la vie absente, cachee, et\npour ainsi dire privee, des choses, et quelles que soient les\nconstructions hypothetiques qu'on en fasse, il reste vrai que la vie\npublique des choses, cette actualite presente par laquelle elles nous\nconfrontent, d'ou derivent toutes nos constructions theoriques, et a\nlaquelle elles doivent toutes revenir et se rattacher sous peine de\nflotter dans l'air et dans l'irreel; cette actualite, dis-je, est\nhomogene, et non pas seulement homogene, mais numeriquement une, avec\nune certaine partie de notre vie interieure.\n\nVoila pour la perception exterieure. Quand on s'adresse a l'imagination,\na la memoire ou aux facultes de representation abstraite, bien que les\nfaits soient ici beaucoup plus compliques, je crois que la meme\nhomogeneite essentielle se degage. Pour simplifier le probleme, excluons\nd'abord toute realite sensible. Prenons la pensee pure, telle qu'elle\ns'effectue dans le reve ou la reverie, ou dans la memoire du passe. Ici\nencore, l'etoffe de l'experience ne fait-elle pas double emploi, le\nphysique et le psychique ne se confondent-ils pas? Si je reve d'une\nmontagne d'or, elle n'existe sans doute pas en dehors du reve, mais\n_dans_ le reve elle est de nature ou d'essence parfaitement physique,\nc'est _comme_ physique qu'elle m'apparait. Si en ce moment je me permets\nde me souvenir de ma maison en Amerique, et des details de mon\nembarquement recent pour l'Italie, le phenomene pur, le fait qui se\nproduit, qu'est-il? C'est, dit-on, ma pensee, avec son contenu. Mais\nencore ce contenu, qu'est-il? Il porte la forme d'une partie du monde\nreel, partie distante, il est vrai, de six mille kilometres d'espace et\nde six semaines de temps, mais reliee a la salle ou nous sommes par une\nfoule de choses, objets et evenements, homogenes d'une part avec la\nsalle et d'autre part avec l'objet de mes souvenirs.\n\nCe contenu ne se donne pas comme etant d'abord un tout petit fait\ninterieur que je projetterais ensuite au loin, il se presente d'emblee\ncomme le fait eloigne meme. Et l'acte de penser ce contenu, la\nconscience que j'en ai, que sont-ils? Sont-ce au fond autre chose que\ndes manieres retrospectives de nommer le contenu lui-meme, lorsqu'on\nl'aura separe de tous ces intermediaires physiques, et relie a un\nnouveau groupe d'associes qui le font rentrer dans ma vie mentale, les\nemotions par exemple qu'il a eveillees en moi, l'attention que j'y\nporte, mes idees de tout a l'heure qui l'ont suscite comme souvenir? Ce\nn'est qu'en se rapportant a ces derniers associes que le phenomene\narrive a etre classe comme _pensee_; tant qu'il ne se rapporte qu'aux\npremiers il demeure phenomene _objectif_.\n\nIl est vrai que nous opposons habituellement nos images interieures aux\nobjets, et que nous les considerons comme de petites copies, comme des\ncalques ou doubles, affaiblis, de ces derniers. C'est qu'un objet\npresent a une vivacite et une nettete superieures a celles de l'image.\nIl lui fait ainsi contraste; et pour me servir de l'excellent mot de\nTaine, il lui sert de _reducteur_. Quand les deux sont presents\nensemble, l'objet prend le premier plan et l'image \"recule,\" devient une\nchose \"absente.\" Mais cet objet present, qu'est-il en lui-meme? De\nquelle etoffe est-il fait? De la meme etoffe que l'image. Il est fait de\n_sensations_; il est chose percue. Son _esse_ est _percipi_, et lui et\nl'image sont generiquement homogenes.\n\nSi je pense en ce moment a mon chapeau que j'ai laisse tout a l'heure au\nvestiaire, ou est le dualisme, le discontinu, entre le chapeau pense et\nle chapeau reel? C'est d'un vrai _chapeau absent_ que mon esprit\ns'occupe. J'en tiens compte pratiquement comme d'une realite. S'il etait\npresent sur cette table, le chapeau determinerait un mouvement de ma\nmain: je l'enleverais. De meme ce chapeau concu, ce chapeau en idee,\ndeterminera tantot la direction de mes pas. J'irai le prendre. L'idee\nque j'en ai se continuera jusqu'a la presence sensible du chapeau, et\ns'y fondra harmonieusement.\n\nJe conclus donc que,--bien qu'il y ait un dualisme pratique--puisque les\nimages se distinguent des objets, en tiennent lieu, et nous y menent, il\nn'y a pas lieu de leur attribuer une difference de nature essentielle.\nPensee et actualite sont faites d'une seule et meme etoffe, qui est\nl'etoffe de l'experience en general.\n\nLa psychologie de la perception exterieure nous mene a la meme\nconclusion. Quand j'apercois l'objet devant moi comme une table de telle\nforme, a telle distance, on m'explique que ce fait est du a deux\nfacteurs, a une matiere de sensation qui me penetre par la voie des yeux\net qui donne l'element d'exteriorite reelle, et a des idees qui se\nreveillent, vont a la rencontre de cette realite, la classent et\nl'interpretent. Mais qui peut faire la part, dans la table concretement\napercue, de ce qui est sensation et de ce qui est idee? L'externe et\nl'interne, l'etendu et l'inetendu, se fusionnent et font un mariage\nindissoluble. Cela rappelle ces panoramas circulaires, ou des objets\nreels, rochers, herbe, chariots brises, etc., qui occupent l'avant-plan,\nsont si ingenieusement relies a la toile qui fait le fond, et qui\nrepresente une bataille ou un vaste paysage, que l'on ne sait plus\ndistinguer ce qui est objet de ce qui est peinture. Les coutures et les\njoints sont imperceptibles.\n\nCela pourrait-il advenir si l'objet et l'idee etaient absolument\ndissemblables de nature?\n\n * * * * *\n\nJe suis convaincu que des considerations pareilles a celles que je viens\nd'exprimer auront deja suscite, chez vous aussi, des doutes au sujet du\ndualisme pretendu.\n\nEt d'autres raisons de douter surgissent encore. Il y a toute une sphere\nd'adjectifs et d'attributs qui ne sont ni objectifs, ni subjectifs d'une\nmaniere exclusive, mais que nous employons tantot d'une maniere et\ntantot d'une autre, comme si nous nous complaisions dans leur ambiguite.\nJe parle des qualites que nous _apprecions_, pour ainsi dire, dans les\nchoses, leur cote esthetique, moral, leur valeur pour nous. La beaute,\npar exemple, ou reside-t-elle? Est-elle dans la statue, dans la sonate,\nou dans notre esprit? Mon collegue a Harvard, George Santayana, a ecrit\nun livre d'esthetique,[117] ou il appelle la beaute \"le plaisir\nobjectifie\"; et en verite, c'est bien ici qu'on pourrait parler de\nprojection au dehors. On dit indifferemment une chaleur agreable, ou une\nsensation agreable de chaleur. La rarete, le precieux du diamant nous en\nparaissent des qualites essentielles. Nous parlons d'un orage affreux,\nd'un homme haissable, d'une action indigne, et nous croyons parler\nobjectivement, bien que ces termes n'expriment que des rapports a notre\nsensibilite emotive propre. Nous disons meme un chemin penible, un ciel\ntriste, un coucher de soleil superbe. Toute cette maniere animiste de\nregarder les choses qui parait avoir ete la facon primitive de penser\ndes hommes, peut tres bien s'expliquer (et M. Santayana, dans un autre\nlivre tout recent,[118] l'a bien expliquee ainsi) par l'habitude\nd'attribuer a l'objet _tout_ ce que nous ressentons en sa presence. Le\npartage du subjectif et de l'objectif est le fait d'une reflexion tres\navancee, que nous aimons encore ajourner dans beaucoup d'endroits. Quand\nles besoins pratiques ne nous en tirent pas forcement, il semble que\nnous aimons a nous bercer dans le vague.\n\nLes qualites secondes elles-memes, chaleur, son, lumiere, n'ont encore\naujourd'hui qu'une attribution vague. Pour le sens commun, pour la vie\npratique, elles sont absolument objectives, physiques. Pour le\nphysicien, elles sont subjectives. Pour lui, il n'y a que la forme, la\nmasse, le mouvement, qui aient une realite exterieure. Pour le\nphilosophe idealiste, au contraire, forme et mouvement sont tout aussi\nsubjectifs que lumiere et chaleur, et il n'y a que la chose-en-soi\ninconnue, le \"noumene,\" qui jouisse d'une realite extramentale complete.\n\nNos sensations intimes conservent encore de cette ambiguite. Il y a des\nillusions de mouvement qui prouvent que nos premieres sensations de\nmouvement etaient generalisees. C'est le monde entier, avec nous, qui se\nmouvait. Maintenant nous distinguons notre propre mouvement de celui des\nobjets qui nous entourent, et parmi les objets nous en distinguons qui\ndemeurent en repos. Mais il est des etats de vertige ou nous retombons\nencore aujourd'hui dans l'indifferenciation premiere.\n\nVous connaissez tous sans doute cette theorie qui a voulu faire des\nemotions des sommes de sensations viscerales et musculaires. Elle a\ndonne lieu a bien des controverses, et aucune opinion n'a encore conquis\nl'unanimite des suffrages. Vous connaissez aussi les controverses sur la\nnature de l'activite mentale. Les uns soutiennent qu'elle est une force\npurement spirituelle que nous sommes en etat d'apercevoir immediatement\ncomme telle. Les autres pretendent que ce que nous nommons activite\nmentale (effort, attention, par exemple) n'est que le reflet senti de\ncertains effets dont notre organisme est le siege, tensions musculaires\nau crane et au gosier, arret ou passage de la respiration, afflux de\nsang, etc.\n\nDe quelque maniere que se resolvent ces controverses, leur existence\nprouve bien clairement une chose, c'est qu'il est tres difficile, ou\nmeme absolument impossible de savoir, par la seule inspection intime de\ncertains phenomenes, s'ils sont de nature physique, occupant de\nl'etendue, etc., ou s'ils sont de nature purement psychique et\ninterieure. Il nous faut toujours trouver des raisons pour appuyer notre\navis; il nous faut chercher la classification la plus probable du\nphenomene; et en fin de compte il pourrait bien se trouver que toutes\nnos classifications usuelles eussent eu leurs motifs plutot dans les\nbesoins de la pratique que dans quelque faculte que nous aurions\nd'apercevoir deux essences ultimes et diverses qui composeraient\nensemble la trame des choses. Le corps de chacun de nous offre un\ncontraste pratique presque violent a tout le reste du milieu ambiant.\nTout ce qui arrive au dedans de ce corps nous est plus intime et\nimportant que ce qui arrive ailleurs. Il s'identifie avec notre moi, il\nse classe avec lui. Ame, vie, souffle, qui saurait bien les distinguer\nexactement? Meme nos images et nos souvenirs, qui n'agissent sur le\nmonde physique que par le moyen de notre corps, semblent appartenir a ce\ndernier. Nous les traitons comme internes, nous les classons avec nos\nsentiments affectifs. Il faut bien avouer, en somme, que la question du\ndualisme de la pensee et de la matiere est bien loin d'etre finalement\nresolue.\n\nEt voila terminee la premiere partie de mon discours. J'ai voulu vous\npenetrer, Mesdames et Messieurs, de mes doutes et de la realite, aussi\nbien que de l'importance, du probleme.\n\nQuant a moi, apres de longues annees d'hesitation, j'ai fini par prendre\nmon parti carrement. Je crois que la conscience, telle qu'on se la\nrepresente communement, soit comme entite, soit comme activite pure,\nmais en tout cas comme fluide, inetendue, diaphane, vide de tout contenu\npropre, mais se connaissant directement elle-meme, spirituelle enfin, je\ncrois, dis-je, que cette conscience est une pure chimere, et que la\nsomme de realites concretes que le mot conscience devrait couvrir,\nmerite une toute autre description, description, du reste, qu'une\nphilosophie attentive aux faits et sachant faire un peu d'analyse,\nserait desormais en etat de fournir ou plutot de commencer a fournir. Et\nces mots m'amenent a la seconde partie de mon discours. Elle sera\nbeaucoup plus courte que la premiere, parce que si je la developpais sur\nla meme echelle, elle serait beaucoup trop longue. Il faut, par\nconsequent, que je me restreigne aux seules indications indispensables.\n\n * * * * *\n\nAdmettons que la conscience, la _Bewusstheit_, concue comme essence,\nentite, activite, moitie irreductible de chaque experience, soit\nsupprimee, que le dualisme fondamental et pour ainsi dire ontologique\nsoit aboli et que ce que nous supposions exister soit seulement ce qu'on\na appele jusqu'ici le _contenu_, le _Inhalt_, de la conscience; comment\nla philosophie va-t-elle se tirer d'affaire avec l'espece de monisme\nvague qui en resultera? Je vais tacher de vous insinuer quelques\nsuggestions positives la-dessus, bien que je craigne que, faute du\ndeveloppement necessaire, mes idees ne repandront pas une clarte tres\ngrande. Pourvu que j'indique un commencement de sentier, ce sera\npeut-etre assez.\n\nAu fond, pourquoi nous accrochons-nous d'une maniere si tenace a cette\nidee d'une conscience surajoutee a l'existence du contenu des choses?\nPourquoi la reclamons-nous si fortement, que celui qui la nierait nous\nsemblerait plutot un mauvais plaisant qu'un penseur? N'est-ce pas pour\nsauver ce fait indeniable que le contenu de l'experience n'a pas\nseulement une existence propre et comme immanente et intrinseque, mais\nque chaque partie de ce contenu deteint pour ainsi dire sur ses\nvoisines, rend compte d'elle-meme a d'autres, sort en quelque sorte de\nsoi pour etre sue et qu'ainsi tout le champ de l'experience se trouve\netre transparent de part en part, ou constitue comme un espace qui\nserait rempli de miroirs?\n\nCette bilateralite des parties de l'experience,--a savoir d'une part,\nqu'elles _sont_ avec des qualites propres; d'autre part, qu'elles sont\nrapportees a d'autres parties et _sues_--l'opinion regnante la constate\net l'explique par un dualisme fondamental de constitution appartenant a\nchaque morceau d'experience en propre. Dans cette feuille de papier il\nn'y a pas seulement, dit-on, le contenu, blancheur, minceur, etc., mais\nil y a ce second fait de la conscience de cette blancheur et de cette\nminceur. Cette fonction d'etre \"rapporte,\" de faire partie de la trame\nentiere d'une experience plus comprehensive, on l'erige en fait\nontologique, et on loge ce fait dans l'interieur meme du papier, en\nl'accouplant a sa blancheur et a sa minceur. Ce n'est pas un rapport\nextrinseque qu'on suppose, c'est une moitie du phenomene meme.\n\nJe crois qu'en somme on se represente la realite comme constituee de la\nfacon dont sont faites les \"couleurs\" qui nous servent a la peinture. Il\ny a d'abord des matieres colorantes qui repondent au contenu, et il y a\nun vehicule, huile ou colle, qui les tient en suspension et qui repond a\nla conscience. C'est un dualisme complet, ou, en employant certains\nprocedes, on peut separer chaque element de l'autre par voie de\nsoustraction. C'est ainsi qu'on nous assure qu'en faisant un grand\neffort d'abstraction introspective, nous pouvons saisir notre\nconscience sur le vif, comme une activite spirituelle pure, en\nnegligeant a peu pres completement les matieres qu'a un moment donne\nelle eclaire.\n\nMaintenant je vous demande si on ne pourrait pas tout aussi bien\nrenverser absolument cette maniere de voir. Supposons, en effet, que la\nrealite premiere soit de nature neutre, et appelons-la par quelque nom\nencore ambigu, comme _phenomene_, _donne_, _Vorfindung_. Moi-meme j'en\nparle volontiers au pluriel, et je lui donne le nom d'_experiences\npures_. Ce sera un monisme, si vous voulez, mais un monisme tout a fait\nrudimentaire et absolument oppose au soi-disant monisme bilateral du\npositivisme scientifique ou spinoziste.\n\nCes experiences pures existent et se succedent, entrent dans des\nrapports infiniment varies les unes avec les autres, rapports qui sont\neux-memes des parties essentielles de la trame des experiences. Il y a\n\"Conscience\" de ces rapports au meme titre qu'il y a \"Conscience\" de\nleurs termes. Il en resulte que des _groupes_ d'experiences se font\nremarquer et distinguer, et qu'une seule et meme experience, vu la\ngrande variete de ses rapports, peut jouer un role dans plusieurs\ngroupes a la fois. C'est ainsi que dans un certain contexte de voisins,\nelle serait classee comme un phenomene physique, tandis que dans un\nautre entourage elle figurerait comme un fait de conscience, a peu pres\ncomme une meme particule d'encre peut appartenir simultanement a deux\nlignes, l'une verticale, l'autre horizontale, pourvu qu'elle soit situee\na leur intersection.\n\nPrenons, pour fixer nos idees, l'experience que nous avons a ce moment\ndu local ou nous sommes, de ces murailles, de cette table, de ces\nchaises, de cet espace. Dans cette experience pleine, concrete et\nindivise, telle qu'elle est la, donnee, le monde physique objectif et le\nmonde interieur et personnel de chacun de nous se rencontrent et se\nfusionnent comme des lignes se fusionnent a leur intersection. Comme\nchose physique, cette salle a des rapports avec tout le reste du\nbatiment, batiment que nous autres nous ne connaissons et ne connaitrons\npas. Elle doit son existence a toute une histoire de financiers,\nd'architectes, d'ouvriers. Elle pese sur le sol; elle durera\nindefiniment dans le temps; si le feu y eclatait, les chaises et la\ntable qu'elle contient seraient vite reduites en cendres.\n\nComme experience personnelle, au contraire, comme chose \"rapportee,\"\nconnue, consciente, cette salle a de tout autres tenants et\naboutissants. Ses antecedents ne sont pas des ouvriers, ce sont nos\npensees respectives de tout a l'heure. Bientot elle ne figurera que\ncomme un fait fugitif dans nos biographies, associe a d'agreables\nsouvenirs. Comme experience psychique, elle n'a aucun poids, son\nameublement n'est pas combustible. Elle n'exerce de force physique que\nsur nos seuls cerveaux, et beaucoup d'entre nous nient encore cette\ninfluence; tandis que la salle physique est en rapport d'influence\nphysique avec tout le reste du monde.\n\nEt pourtant c'est de la meme salle absolument qu'il s'agit dans les deux\ncas. Tant que nous ne faisons pas de physique speculative, tant que\nnous nous placons dans le sens commun, c'est la salle vue et sentie qui\nest bien la salle physique. De quoi parlons-nous donc si ce n'est de\n_cela_, de cette meme partie de la nature materielle que tous nos\nesprits, a ce meme moment, embrassent, qui entre telle quelle dans\nl'experience actuelle et intime de chacun de nous, et que notre souvenir\nregardera toujours comme une partie integrante de notre histoire. C'est\nabsolument une meme etoffe qui figure simultanement, selon le contexte\nque l'on considere, comme fait materiel et physique, ou comme fait de\nconscience intime.\n\nJe crois donc qu'on ne saurait traiter conscience et matiere comme etant\nd'essence disparate. On n'obtient ni l'une ni l'autre par soustraction,\nen negligeant chaque fois l'autre moitie d'une experience de composition\ndouble. Les experiences sont au contraire primitivement de nature plutot\nsimple. Elles _deviennent_ conscientes dans leur entier, elles\n_deviennent_ physiques dans leur entier; et c'est _par voie d'addition_\nque ce resultat se realise. Pour autant que des experiences se\nprolongent dans le temps, entrent dans des rapports d'influence\nphysique, se brisant, se chauffant, s'eclairant, etc., mutuellement,\nnous en faisons un groupe a part que nous appelons le monde physique.\nPour autant, au contraire, qu'elles sont fugitives, inertes\nphysiquement, que leur succession ne suit pas d'ordre determine, mais\nsemble plutot obeir a des caprices emotifs, nous en faisons un autre\ngroupe que nous appelons le monde psychique. C'est en entrant a present\ndans un grand nombre de ces groupes psychiques que cette salle devient\nmaintenant chose consciente, chose rapportee, chose sue. En faisant\ndesormais partie de nos biographies respectives, elle ne sera pas suivie\nde cette sotte et monotone repetition d'elle-meme dans le temps qui\ncaracterise son existence physique. Elle sera suivie, au contraire, par\nd'autres experiences qui seront discontinues avec elle, ou qui auront ce\ngenre tout particulier de continuite que nous appelons souvenir. Demain,\nelle aura eu sa place dans chacun de nos passes; mais les presents\ndivers auxquels tous ces passes seront lies demain seront bien\ndifferents du present dont cette salle jouira demain comme entite\nphysique.\n\nLes deux genres de groupes sont formes d'experiences, mais les rapports\ndes experiences entre elles different d'un groupe a l'autre. C'est donc\npar addition d'autres phenomenes qu'un phenomene donne devient conscient\nou connu, ce n'est pas par un dedoublement d'essence interieure. La\nconnaissance des choses leur _survient_, elle ne leur est pas immanente.\nCe n'est le fait ni d'un moi transcendental, ni d'une _Bewusstheit_ ou\nacte de conscience qui les animerait chacune. _Elles se connaissent\nl'une l'autre_, ou plutot il y en a qui connaissent les autres; et le\nrapport que nous nommons connaissance n'est lui-meme, dans beaucoup de\ncas, qu'une suite d'experiences intermediaires parfaitement susceptibles\nd'etre decrites en termes concrets. Il n'est nullement le mystere\ntranscendant ou se sont complus tant de philosophes.\n\nMais ceci nous menerait beaucoup trop loin. Je ne puis entrer ici dans\ntous les replis de la theorie de la connaissance, ou de ce que, vous\nautres Italiens, vous appelez la gnoseologie. Je dois me contenter de\nces remarques ecourtees, ou simples suggestions, qui sont, je le crains,\nencore bien obscures faute des developpements necessaires.\n\nPermettez donc que je me resume--trop sommairement, et en style\ndogmatique--dans les six theses suivantes:\n\n * * * * *\n\n_1^o La Conscience, telle qu'on l'entend ordinairement, n'existe pas,\npas plus que la Matiere, a laquelle Berkeley a donne le coup de grace;_\n\n_2^o Ce qui existe et forme la part de verite que le mot de \"Conscience\"\nrecouvre, c'est la susceptibilite que possedent les parties de\nl'experience d'etre rapportees ou connues;_\n\n_3^o Cette susceptibilite s'explique par le fait que certaines\nexperiences peuvent mener les unes aux autres par des experiences\nintermediaires nettement caracterisees, de telle sorte que les unes se\ntrouvent jouer le role de choses connues, les autres celui de sujets\nconnaissants;_\n\n_4^o On peut parfaitement definir ces deux roles sans sortir de la\ntrame de l'experience meme, et sans invoquer rien de transcendant;_\n\n_5^o Les attributions sujet et objet, represente et representatif, chose\net pensee, signifient donc une distinction pratique qui est de la\nderniere importance, mais qui est d'ordre_ FONCTIONNEL _seulement, et\nnullement ontologique comme le dualisme classique se la represente;_\n\n_6^o En fin de compte, les choses et les pensees ne sont point\nfoncierement heterogenes, mais elles sont faites d'une meme etoffe,\netoffe qu'on ne peut definir comme telle, mais seulement eprouver, et\nque l'on peut nommer, si on veut, l'etoffe de l'experience en general._\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[116] [A communication made (in French) at the Fifth International\nCongress of Psychology, in Rome, April 30, 1905. It is reprinted from\nthe _Archives de Psychologie_, vol. V, No. 17, June, 1905.] Cette\ncommunication est le resume, forcement tres condense, de vues que\nl'auteur a exposees, au cours de ces derniers mois, en une serie\nd'articles publies dans le _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, 1904 et 1905. [The series of articles referred to\nis reprinted above. ED.]\n\n[117] _The Sense of Beauty_, pp. 44 ff.\n\n[118] _The Life of Reason_ [vol. I, \"Reason in Common Sense,\" p. 142].\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nIS RADICAL EMPIRICISM SOLIPSISTIC?[119]\n\n\nIf all the criticisms which the humanistic _Weltanschauung_ is receiving\nwere as _sachgemaess_ as Mr. Bode's,[120] the truth of the matter would\nmore rapidly clear up. Not only is it excellently well written, but it\nbrings its own point of view out clearly, and admits of a perfectly\nstraight reply.\n\nThe argument (unless I fail to catch it) can be expressed as follows:\n\nIf a series of experiences be supposed, no one of which is endowed\nimmediately with the self-transcendent function of reference to a\nreality beyond itself, no motive will occur within the series for\nsupposing anything beyond it to exist. It will remain subjective, and\ncontentedly subjective, both as a whole and in its several parts.\n\nRadical empiricism, trying, as it does, to account for objective\nknowledge by means of such a series, egregiously fails. It can not\nexplain how the notion of a physical order, as distinguished from a\nsubjectively biographical order, of experiences, ever arose.\n\nIt pretends to explain the notion of a physical order, but does so by\nplaying fast and loose with the concept of objective reference. On the\none hand, it denies that such reference implies self-transcendency on\nthe part of any one experience; on the other hand, it claims that\nexperiences _point_. But, critically considered, there can be no\npointing unless self-transcendency be also allowed. The conjunctive\nfunction of pointing, as I have assumed it, is, according to my critic,\nvitiated by the fallacy of attaching a bilateral relation to a term _a\nquo_, as if it could stick out substantively and maintain itself in\nexistence in advance of the term _ad quem_ which is equally required for\nit to be a concretely experienced fact. If the relation be made\nconcrete, the term _ad quem_ is involved, which would mean (if I succeed\nin apprehending Mr. Bode rightly) that this latter term, although not\nempirically there, is yet _noetically_ there, in advance--in other words\nit would mean that any experience that 'points' must already have\ntranscended itself, in the ordinary 'epistemological' sense of the word\ntranscend.\n\nSomething like this, if I understand Mr. Bode's text, is the upshot of\nhis state of mind. It is a reasonable sounding state of mind, but it is\nexactly the state of mind which radical empiricism, by its doctrine of\nthe reality of conjunctive relations, seeks to dispel. I very much\nfear--so difficult does mutual understanding seem in these exalted\nregions--that my able critic has failed to understand that doctrine as\nit is meant to be understood. I suspect that he performs on all these\nconjunctive relations (of which the aforesaid 'pointing' is only one)\nthe usual rationalistic act of substitution--he takes them not as they\nare given in their first intention, as parts constitutive of\nexperience's living flow, but only as they appear in retrospect, each\nfixed as a determinate object of conception, static, therefore, and\ncontained within itself.\n\nAgainst this rationalistic tendency to treat experience as chopped up\ninto discontinuous static objects, radical empiricism protests. It\ninsists on taking conjunctions at their 'face-value,' just as they come.\nConsider, for example, such conjunctions as 'and,' 'with,' 'near,'\n'_plus_,' 'towards.' While we live in such conjunctions our state is one\nof _transition_ in the most literal sense. We are expectant of a 'more'\nto come, and before the more _has_ come, the transition, nevertheless,\nis directed _towards_ it. I fail otherwise to see how, if one kind of\nmore comes, there should be satisfaction and feeling of fulfilment; but\ndisappointment if the more comes in another shape. One more will\ncontinue, another more will arrest or deflect the direction, in which\nour experience is moving even now. We can not, it is true, _name_ our\ndifferent living 'ands' or 'withs' except by naming the different terms\ntowards which they are moving us, but we _live_ their specifications and\ndifferences before those terms explicitly arrive. Thus, though the\nvarious 'ands' are all bilateral relations, each requiring a term _ad\nquem_ to define it when viewed in retrospect and articulately conceived,\nyet in its living moment any one of them may be treated as if it 'stuck\nout' from its term _a quo_ and pointed in a special direction, much as a\ncompass-needle (to use Mr. Bode's excellent simile) points at the pole,\neven though it stirs not from its box.\n\nIn Professor Hoeffding's massive little article in _The Journal of\nPhilosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_,[121] he quotes a saying\nof Kierkegaard's to the effect that we live forwards, but we understand\nbackwards. Understanding backwards is, it must be confessed, a very\nfrequent weakness of philosophers, both of the rationalistic and of the\nordinary empiricist type. Radical empiricism alone insists on\nunderstanding forwards also, and refuses to substitute static concepts\nof the understanding for transitions in our moving life. A logic similar\nto that which my critic seems to employ here should, it seems to me,\nforbid him to say that our present is, while present, directed towards\nour future, or that any physical movement can have direction until its\ngoal is actually reached.\n\nAt this point does it not seem as if the quarrel about\nself-transcendency in knowledge might drop? Is it not a purely verbal\ndispute? Call it self-transcendency or call it pointing, whichever you\nlike--it makes no difference so long as real transitions towards real\ngoals are admitted as things given _in_ experience, and among\nexperience's most indefeasible parts. Radical empiricism, unable to\nclose its eyes to the transitions caught _in actu_, accounts for the\nself-transcendency or the pointing (whichever you may call it) as a\nprocess that occurs within experience, as an empirically mediated thing\nof which a perfectly definite description can be given. 'Epistemology,'\non the other hand, denies this; and pretends that the self-transcendency\nis unmediated or, if mediated, then mediated in a super-empirical world.\nTo justify this pretension, epistemology has first to transform all our\nconjunctions into static objects, and this, I submit, is an absolutely\narbitrary act. But in spite of Mr. Bode's mal-treatment of conjunctions,\nas I understand them--and as I understand him--I believe that at bottom\nwe are fighting for nothing different, but are both defending the same\ncontinuities of experience in different forms of words.\n\nThere are other criticisms in the article in question, but, as this\nseems the most vital one, I will for the present, at any rate, leave\nthem untouched.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[119] [Reprinted from _The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. II, No. 9, April 27, 1905.]\n\n[120] [B. H. Bode: \"'Pure Experience' and the External World,\" _Journal\nof Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods_, vol. II, 1905, p.\n128.]\n\n[121] Vol. II, [1905], pp. 85-92.\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nMR. PITKIN'S REFUTATION OF 'RADICAL EMPIRICISM'[122]\n\n\nAlthough Mr. Pitkin does not name me in his acute article on radical\nempiricism,[123] [...] I fear that some readers, knowing me to have\napplied that name to my own doctrine, may possibly consider themselves\nto have been in at my death.\n\nIn point of fact my withers are entirely unwrung. I have, indeed,\nsaid[124] that 'to be radical, an empiricism must not admit into its\nconstructions any element that is not directly experienced.' But in my\nown radical empiricism this is only a _methodological postulate_, not a\nconclusion supposed to flow from the intrinsic absurdity of\ntransempirical objects. I have never felt the slightest respect for the\nidealistic arguments which Mr. Pitkin attacks and of which Ferrier made\nsuch striking use; and I am perfectly willing to admit any number of\nnoumenal beings or events into philosophy if only their pragmatic value\ncan be shown.\n\nRadical empiricism and pragmatism have so many misunderstandings to\nsuffer from, that it seems my duty not to let this one go any farther,\nuncorrected.\n\n * * * * *\n\nMr. Pitkin's 'reply' to me,[125] [...] perplexes me by the obscurity of\nstyle which I find in almost all our younger philosophers. He asks me,\nhowever, two direct questions which I understand, so I take the liberty\nof answering.\n\nFirst he asks: Do not experience and science show 'that countless things\nare[126] experienced as that which they are not or are only partially?'\nI reply: Yes, assuredly, as, for example, 'things' distorted by\nrefractive media, 'molecules,' or whatever else is taken to be more\nultimately real than the immediate content of the perceptive moment.\n\nSecondly: \"If experience is self-supporting[127] (in _any_ intelligible\nsense) does this fact preclude the possibility of (a) something not\nexperienced and (b) action of experience upon a noumenon?\"\n\nMy reply is: Assuredly not the possibility of either--how could it? Yet\nin my opinion we should be wise not to _consider_ any thing or action of\nthat nature, and to restrict our universe of philosophic discourse to\nwhat is experienced or, at least, experienceable.[128]\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[122] [Reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and\nScientific Methods_, vol. III, No. 26, December 20, 1906; and _ibid._,\nvol. IV, No. 4, February 14, 1907, where the original is entitled \"A\nReply to Mr. Pitkin.\" ED.]\n\n[123] [W. B. Pitkin: \"A Problem of Evidence in Radical Empiricism,\"\n_ibid._, vol. III, No. 24, November 22, 1906. ED.]\n\n[124] [Above, p. 42. ED.]\n\n[125] [\"In Reply to Professor James,\" _Journal of Philosophy, Psychology\nand Scientific Methods_, vol. IV, No. 2, January 17, 1907. ED.]\n\n[126] Mr. Pitkin inserts the clause: 'by reason of the very nature of\nexperience itself.' Not understanding just what reason is meant, I do\nnot include this clause in my answer.\n\n[127] [See above, p. 193. ED.]\n\n[128] [Elsewhere, in speaking of 'reality' as \"conceptual or perceptual\nexperiences,\" the author says: \"This is meant merely to exclude reality\nof an 'unknowable' sort, of which no account in either perceptual or\nconceptual terms can be given. It includes, of course, any amount of\nempirical reality independent of the knower.\" _Meaning of Truth_, p.\n100, note. ED.]\n\n\n\n\nXI\n\nHUMANISM AND TRUTH ONCE MORE.[129]\n\n\nMr. Joseph's criticism of my article 'Humanism and Truth'[130] is a\nuseful contribution to the general clearing up. He has seriously tried\nto comprehend what the pragmatic movement may intelligibly mean; and if\nhe has failed, it is the fault neither of his patience nor of his\nsincerity, but rather of stubborn tricks of thought which he could not\neasily get rid of. Minute polemics, in which the parties try to rebut\nevery detail of each of the other's charges, are a useful exercise only\nto the disputants. They can but breed confusion in a reader. I will\ntherefore ignore as much as possible the text of both our articles (mine\nwas inadequate enough) and treat once more the general objective\nsituation.\n\nAs I apprehend the movement towards humanism, it is based on no\nparticular discovery or principle that can be driven into one precise\nformula which thereupon can be impaled upon a logical skewer. It is much\nmore like one of those secular changes that come upon public opinion\nover-night, as it were, borne upon tides 'too full for sound or foam,'\nthat survive all the crudities and extravagances of their advocates,\nthat you can pin to no one absolutely essential statement, nor kill by\nany one decisive stab.\n\nSuch have been the changes from aristocracy to democracy, from classic\nto romantic taste, from theistic to pantheistic feeling, from static to\nevolutionary ways of understanding life--changes of which we all have\nbeen spectators. Scholasticism still opposes to such changes the method\nof confutation by single decisive reasons, showing that the new view\ninvolves self-contradiction, or traverses some fundamental principle.\nThis is like stopping a river by planting a stick in the middle of its\nbed. Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same.'\nIn reading Mr. Joseph, I am not a little reminded of those Catholic\nwriters who refute Darwinism by telling us that higher species can not\ncome from lower because _minus nequit gignere plus_, or that the notion\nof transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to their\nown destruction, and that would violate the principle that every reality\ntends to persevere in its own shape. The point of view is too myopic,\ntoo tight and close to take in the inductive argument. You can not\nsettle questions of fact by formal logic. I feel as if Mr. Joseph almost\npounced on my words singly, without giving the sentences time to get out\nof my mouth.\n\nThe one condition of understanding humanism is to become\ninductive-minded oneself, to drop rigorous definitions, and follow lines\nof least resistance 'on the whole.' \"In other words,\" Mr. Joseph may\nprobably say, \"resolve your intellect into a kind of slush.\" \"Even so,\"\nI make reply,--\"if you will consent to use no politer word.\" For\nhumanism, conceiving the more 'true' as the more 'satisfactory' (Dewey's\nterm) has to renounce sincerely rectilinear arguments and ancient ideals\nof rigor and finality. It is in just this temper of renunciation, so\ndifferent from that of pyrrhonistic scepticism, that the spirit of\nhumanism essentially consists. Satisfactoriness has to be measured by a\nmultitude of standards, of which some, for aught we know, may fail in\nany given case; and what is 'more' satisfactory than any alternative in\nsight, may to the end be a sum of _pluses_ and _minuses_, concerning\nwhich we can only trust that by ulterior corrections and improvements a\nmaximum of the one and a minimum of the other may some day be\napproached. It means a real change of heart, a break with absolutistic\nhopes, when one takes up this view of the conditions of belief.\n\nThat humanism's critics have never imagined this attitude inwardly, is\nshown by their invariable tactics. They do not get into it far enough to\nsee objectively and from without what their own opposite notion of\ntruth is. Mr. Joseph is possessed by some such notion; he thinks his\nreaders to be full of it, he obeys it, works from it, but never even\nessays to tell us what it is. The nearest he comes to doing so is\nwhere[131] he says it is the way \"we ought to think,\" whether we be\npsychologically compelled to or not.\n\nOf course humanism agrees to this: it is only a manner of calling truth\nan ideal. But humanism explicates the summarizing word 'ought' into a\nmass of pragmatic motives from the midst of which our critics think that\ntruth itself takes flight. Truth is a name of double meaning. It stands\nnow for an abstract something defined only as that to which our thought\nought to conform; and again it stands for the concrete propositions\nwithin which we believe that conformity already reigns--they being so\nmany 'truths.' Humanism sees that the only conformity we ever have to\ndeal with concretely is that between our subjects and our predicates,\nusing these words in a very broad sense. It sees moreover that this\nconformity is 'validated' (to use Mr. Schiller's term) by an indefinite\nnumber of pragmatic tests that vary as the predicates and subjects vary.\nIf an S gets superseded by an SP that gives our mind a completer sum of\nsatisfactions, we always say, humanism points out, that we have advanced\nto a better position in regard to truth.\n\nNow many of our judgments thus attained are retrospective. The S'es, so\nthe judgment runs, were SP's already ere the fact was humanly recorded.\nCommon sense, struck by this state of things, now rearranges the whole\nfield; and traditional philosophy follows her example. The general\nrequirement that predicates must conform to their subject, they\ntranslate into an ontological theory. A most previous Subject of all is\nsubstituted for the lesser subjects and conceived of as an archetypal\nReality; and the conformity required of predicates in detail is\nreinterpreted as a relation which our whole mind, with all its subjects\nand predicates together, must get into with respect to this Reality.\nIt, meanwhile, is conceived as eternal, static, and unaffected by our\nthinking. Conformity to a non-human Archetype like this is probably the\nnotion of truth which my opponent shares with common sense and\nphilosophic rationalism.\n\nWhen now Humanism, fully admitting both the naturalness and the grandeur\nof this hypothesis, nevertheless points to its sterility, and declines\nto chime in with the substitution, keeping to the concrete and still\nlodging truth between the subjects and the predicates in detail, it\nprovokes the outcry which we hear and which my critic echoes.\n\nOne of the commonest parts of the outcry is that humanism is\nsubjectivistic altogether--it is supposed to labor under a necessity of\n'denying trans-perceptual reality.'[132] It is not hard to see how this\nmisconception of humanism may have arisen; and humanistic writers,\npartly from not having sufficiently guarded their expressions, and\npartly from not having yet \"got round\" (in the poverty of their\nliterature) to a full discussion of the subject, are doubtless in some\ndegree to blame. But I fail to understand how any one with a working\ngrasp of their principles can charge them wholesale with subjectivism. I\nmyself have never thought of humanism as being subjectivistic farther\nthan to this extent, that, inasmuch as it treats the thinker as being\nhimself one portion of reality, it must also allow that _some_ of the\nrealities that he declares for true are created by his being there. Such\nrealities of course are either acts of his, or relations between other\nthings and him, or relations between things, which, but for him, would\nnever have been traced. Humanists are subjectivistic, also in this,\nthat, unlike rationalists (who think they carry a warrant for the\nabsolute truth of what they now believe in in their present pocket),\nthey hold all present beliefs as subject to revision in the light of\nfuture experience. The future experience, however, may be of things\noutside the thinker; and that this is so the humanist may believe as\nfreely as any other kind of empiricist philosopher.\n\nThe critics of humanism (though here I follow them but darkly) appear to\nobject to any infusion whatever of subjectivism into truth. All must be\narchetypal; every truth must pre-exist to its perception. Humanism sees\nthat an enormous quantity of truth must be written down as having\npre-existed to its perception by us humans. In countless instances we\nfind it most satisfactory to believe that, though we were always\nignorant of the fact, it always _was_ a fact that S was SP. But humanism\nseparates this class of cases from those in which it is more\nsatisfactory to believe the opposite, e.g., that S is ephemeral, or P a\npassing event, or SP created by the perceiving act. Our critics seem on\nthe other hand, to wish to universalize the retrospective type of\ninstance. Reality must pre-exist to every assertion for which truth is\nclaimed. And, not content with this overuse of one particular type of\njudgment, our critics claim its monopoly. They appear to wish to cut off\nHumanism from its rights to any retrospection at all.\n\nHumanism says that satisfactoriness is what distinguishes the true from\nthe false. But satisfactoriness is both a subjective quality, and a\npresent one. _Ergo_ (the critics appear to reason) an object, _qua_\ntrue, must always for humanism be both present and subjective, and a\nhumanist's belief can never be in anything that lives outside of the\nbelief itself or ante-dates it. Why so preposterous a charge should be\nso current, I find it hard to say. Nothing is more obvious than the fact\nthat both the objective and the past existence of the object may be the\nvery things about it that most seem satisfactory, and that most invite\nus to believe them. The past tense can figure in the humanist's world,\nas well of belief as of representation, quite as harmoniously as in the\nworld of any one else.\n\nMr. Joseph gives a special turn to this accusation. He charges me[133]\nwith being self-contradictory when I say that the main categories of\nthought were evolved in the course of experience itself. For I use these\nvery categories to define the course of experience by. Experience, as I\ntalk about it, is a product of their use; and yet I take it as true\nanteriorly to them. This seems to Mr. Joseph to be an absurdity. I hope\nit does not seem such to his readers; for if experiences can suggest\nhypotheses at all (and they notoriously do so) I can see no absurdity\nwhatever in the notion of a retrospective hypothesis having for its\nobject the very train of experiences by which its own being, along with\nthat of other things, has been brought about. If the hypothesis is\n'satisfactory' we must, of course, believe it to have been true\nanteriorly to its formulation by ourselves. Every explanation of a\npresent by a past seems to involve this kind of circle, which is not a\nvicious circle. The past is _causa existendi_ of the present, which in\nturn is _causa cognoscendi_ of the past. If the present were treated as\n_causa existendi_ of the past, the circle might indeed be vicious.\n\nClosely connected with this pseudo-difficulty is another one of wider\nscope and greater complication--more excusable therefore.[134]\nHumanism, namely, asking how truth in point of fact is reached, and\nseeing that it is by ever substituting more satisfactory for less\nsatisfactory opinions, is thereby led into a vague historic sketch of\ntruth's development. The earliest 'opinions,' it thinks, must have been\ndim, unconnected 'feelings,' and only little by little did more and more\norderly views of things replace them. Our own retrospective view of this\nwhole evolution is now, let us say, the latest candidate for 'truth' as\nyet reached in the process. To be a satisfactory candidate, it must give\nsome definite sort of a picture of what forces keep the process going.\nOn the subjective side we have a fairly definite picture--sensation,\nassociation, interest, hypothesis, these account in a general way for\nthe growth into a cosmos of the relative chaos with which the mind\nbegan.\n\nBut on the side of the object, so to call it roughly, our view is much\nless satisfactory. Of which of our many objects are we to believe that\nit truly _was_ there and at work before the human mind began? Time,\nspace, kind, number, serial order, cause, consciousness, are hard things\nnot to objectify--even transcendental idealism leaves them standing as\n'empirically real.' Substance, matter, force, fall down more easily\nbefore criticism, and secondary qualities make almost no resistance at\nall. Nevertheless, when we survey the field of speculation, from\nScholasticism through Kantism to Spencerism, we find an ever-recurring\ntendency to convert the pre-human into a merely logical object, an\nunknowable _ding-an-sich_, that but starts the process, or a vague\n_materia prima_ that but receives our forms.[135]\n\nThe reasons for this are not so much logical as they are material. We\ncan postulate an extra-mental _that_ freely enough (though some\nidealists have denied us the privilege), but when we have done so, the\n_what_ of it is hard to determine satisfactorily, because of the\noppositions and entanglements of the variously proposed _whats_ with one\nanother and with the history of the human mind. The literature of\nspeculative cosmology bears witness to this difficulty. Humanism suffers\nfrom it no more than any other philosophy suffers, but it makes all our\ncosmogonic theories so unsatisfactory that some thinkers seek relief in\nthe denial of any primal dualism. Absolute Thought or 'pure experience'\nis postulated, and endowed with attributes calculated to justify the\nbelief that it may 'run itself.' Both these truth-claiming hypotheses\nare non-dualistic in the old mind-and-matter sense; but the one is\nmonistic and the other pluralistic as to the world process itself. Some\nhumanists are non-dualists of this sort--I myself am one _und zwar_ of\nthe pluralistic brand. But doubtless dualistic humanists also exist, as\nwell as non-dualistic ones of the monistic wing.\n\nMr. Joseph pins these general philosophic difficulties on humanism\nalone, or possibly on me alone. My article spoke vaguely of a 'most\nchaotic pure experience' coming first, and building up the mind.[136]\nBut how can two structureless things interact so as to produce a\nstructure? my critic triumphantly asks. Of course they can't, as purely\nso-named entities. We must make additional hypotheses. We must beg a\nminimum of structure for them. The _kind_ of minimum that _might_ have\ntended to increase towards what we now find actually developed is the\nphilosophical desideratum here. The question is that of the most\nmaterially satisfactory hypothesis. Mr. Joseph handles it by formal\nlogic purely, as if he had no acquaintance with the logic of hypothesis\nat all.\n\nMr. Joseph again is much bewildered as to what a humanist can mean when\nhe uses the word knowledge. He tries to convict me[137] of vaguely\nidentifying it with any kind of good. Knowledge is a difficult thing to\ndefine briefly, and Mr. Joseph shows his own constructive hand here even\nless than in the rest of his article. I have myself put forth on\nseveral occasions a radically pragmatist account of knowledge,[138] the\nexistence of which account my critic probably does not know of--so\nperhaps I had better not say anything about knowledge until he reads and\nattacks that. I will say, however, that whatever the relation called\nknowing may itself prove to consist in, I can think of no conceivable\nkind of _object_ which may not become an object of knowledge on\nhumanistic principles as well as on the principles of any other\nphilosophy.[139]\n\nI confess that I am pretty steadily hampered by the habit, on the part\nof humanism's critics, of assuming that they have truer ideas than mine\nof truth and knowledge, the nature of which I must know of and can not\nneed to have re-defined. I have consequently to reconstruct these ideas\nin order to carry on the discussion (I have e.g. had to do so in some\nparts of this article) and I thereby expose myself to charges of\ncaricature. In one part of Mr. Joseph's attack, however, I rejoice that\nwe are free from this embarrassment. It is an important point and covers\nprobably a genuine difficulty, so I take it up last.\n\nWhen, following Schiller and Dewey, I define the true as that which\ngives the maximal combination of satisfactions, and say that\nsatisfaction is a many-dimensional term that can be realized in various\nways, Mr. Joseph replies, rightly enough, that the chief satisfaction of\na rational creature must always be his thought that what he believes is\n_true_, whether the truth brings him the satisfaction of collateral\nprofits or not. This would seem, however, to make of truth the prior\nconcept, and to relegate satisfaction to a secondary place.\n\nAgain, if to be satisfactory is what is meant by being true, _whose_\nsatisfactions, and _which_ of his satisfactions, are to count?\nDiscriminations notoriously have to be made; and the upshot is that only\nrational candidates and intellectual satisfactions stand the test. We\nare then driven to a purely theoretic notion of truth, and get out of\nthe pragmatic atmosphere altogether. And with this Mr. Joseph leaves\nus--truth is truth, and there is an end of the matter. But he makes a\nvery pretty show of convicting me of self-stultification in according to\nour purely theoretic satisfactions any place in the humanistic scheme.\nThey crowd the collateral satisfactions out of house and home, he\nthinks, and pragmatism has to go into bankruptcy if she recognizes them\nat all.\n\nThere is no room for disagreement about the facts here; but the\ndestructive force of the reasoning disappears as soon as we talk\nconcretely instead of abstractly, and ask, in our quality of good\npragmatists, just what the famous theoretic needs are known as and in\nwhat the intellectual satisfactions consist. Mr. Joseph, faithful to the\nhabits of his party, makes no attempt at characterizing them, but\nassumes that their nature is self-evident to all.\n\nAre they not all mere matters of _consistency_--and emphatically _not_\nof consistency between an Absolute Reality and the mind's copies of it,\nbut of actually felt consistency among judgments, objects, and manners\nof reacting, in the mind? And are not both our need of such consistency\nand our pleasure in it conceivable as outcomes of the natural fact that\nwe are beings that develop mental _habits_--habit itself proving\nadaptively beneficial in an environment where the same objects, or the\nsame kinds of objects, recur and follow 'law'? If this were so, what\nwould have come first would have been the collateral profits of habit,\nand the theoretic life would have grown up in aid of these. In point of\nfact this seems to have been the probable case. At life's origin, any\npresent perception may have been 'true'--if such a word could then be\napplicable. Later, when reactions became organized, the reactions became\n'true' whenever expectation was fulfilled by them. Otherwise they were\n'false' or 'mistaken' reactions. But the same class of objects needs the\nsame kind of reaction, so the impulse to react consistently must\ngradually have been established, with a disappointment felt whenever\nthe results frustrated expectation. Here is a perfectly plausible germ\nfor all our higher consistencies. Nowadays, if an object claims from us\na reaction of the kind habitually accorded only to the opposite class of\nobjects, our mental machinery refuses to run smoothly. The situation is\nintellectually unsatisfactory. To gain relief we seek either to preserve\nthe reaction by re-interpreting the object, or, leaving the object as it\nis, we react in a way contrary to the way claimed of us. Neither\nsolution is easy. Such a situation might be that of Mr. Joseph, with me\nclaiming assent to humanism from him. He can not apperceive it so as to\npermit him to gratify my claim; but there is enough appeal in the claim\nto induce him to write a whole article in justification of his refusal.\nIf he should assent to humanism, on the other hand, that would drag\nafter it an unwelcome, yea incredible, alteration of his previous mental\nbeliefs. Whichever alternative he might adopt, however, a new\nequilibrium of intellectual consistency would in the end be reached. He\nwould feel, whichever way he decided, that he was now thinking truly.\nBut if, with his old habits unaltered, he should simply add to them the\nnew one of advocating humanism quietly or noisily, his mind would be\nrent into two systems, each of which would accuse the other of\nfalsehood. The resultant situation, being profoundly unsatisfactory,\nwould also be instable.\n\nTheoretic truth is thus no relation between our mind and archetypal\nreality. It falls _within_ the mind, being the accord of some of its\nprocesses and objects with other processes and objects--'accord'\nconsisting here in well-definable relations. So long as the satisfaction\nof feeling such an accord is denied us, whatever collateral profits may\nseem to inure from what we believe in are but as dust in the\nbalance--provided always that we are highly organized intellectually,\nwhich the majority of us are not. The amount of accord which satisfies\nmost men and women is merely the absence of violent clash between their\nusual thoughts and statements and the limited sphere of\nsense-perceptions in which their lives are cast. The theoretic truth\nthat most of us think we 'ought' to attain to is thus the possession of\na set of predicates that do not contradict their subjects. We preserve\nit as often as not by leaving other predicates and subjects out.\n\nIn some men theory is a passion, just as music is in others. The form of\ninner consistency is pursued far beyond the line at which collateral\nprofits stop. Such men systematize and classify and schematize and make\nsynoptical tables and invent ideal objects for the pure love of\nunifying. Too often the results, glowing with 'truth' for the inventors,\nseem pathetically personal and artificial to bystanders. Which is as\nmuch as to say that the purely theoretic criterion of truth can leave us\nin the lurch as easily as any other criterion.\n\nI think that if Mr. Joseph will but consider all these things a little\nmore concretely, he may find that the humanistic scheme and the notion\nof theoretic truth fall into line consistently enough to yield him also\nintellectual satisfaction.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[129] [Reprinted without change from _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIV, No. 54,\nApril, 1905, pp. 190-198. Pages 245-247, and pp. 261-265, have also been\nreprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp. 54-57, and pp. 97-100. The\npresent essay is referred to above, p. 203. ED.]\n\n[130] ['Humanism and Truth' first appeared in _Mind_, N. S., vol. XIII,\nNo. 52, October, 1904. It is reprinted in _The Meaning of Truth_, pp.\n51-101. Cf. this article _passim_. Mr. H. W. B. Joseph's criticism,\nentitled \"Professor James on 'Humanism and Truth,'\" appeared in _Mind_,\nN. S., vol. XIV, No. 53, January, 1905. ED.]\n\n[131] _Op. cit._, p. 37.\n\n[132] [Cf. above, pp. 241-243.]\n\n[133] _Op. cit._, p. 32.\n\n[134] [This] Mr. Joseph deals with (though in much too pettifogging and\nlogic-chopping a way) on pp. 33-34 of his article.\n\n[135] Compare some elaborate articles by M. Le Roy and M. Wilbois in the\n_Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale_, vols. VIII, IX, and X, [1900,\n1901, and 1902.]\n\n[136] [Cf. _The Meaning of Truth_, p. 64.]\n\n[137] [Joseph: _op. cit._, p. 36.]\n\n[138] Most recently in two articles, \"Does 'Consciousness' Exist?\" and\n\"A World of Pure Experience.\" [See above, pp. 1-91.]\n\n[139] For a recent attempt, effective on the whole, at squaring humanism\nwith knowing, I may refer to Prof. Woodbridge's very able address at the\nSaint Louis Congress, \"The Field of Logic,\" printed in _Science_, N. Y.,\nNovember 4, 1904.\n\n\n\n\nXII\n\nABSOLUTISM AND EMPIRICISM[140]\n\n\nNo seeker of truth can fail to rejoice at the terre-a-terre sort of\ndiscussion of the issues between Empiricism and Transcendentalism (or,\nas the champions of the latter would probably prefer to say, between\nIrrationalism and Rationalism) that seems to have begun in _Mind_.[141]\nIt would seem as if, over concrete examples like Mr. J. S. Haldane's,\nboth parties ought inevitably to come to a better understanding. As a\nreader with a strong bias towards Irrationalism, I have studied his\narticle[142] with the liveliest admiration of its temper and its\npainstaking effort to be clear. But the cases discussed failed to\nsatisfy me, and I was at first tempted to write a Note animadverting\nupon them in detail. The growth of the limb, the sea's contour, the\nvicarious functioning of the nerve-centre, the digitalis curing the\nheart, are unfortunately _not_ cases where we can _see_ any\n_through-and-through_ conditioning of the parts by the whole. They are\nall cases of reciprocity where subjects, supposed independently to\nexist, acquire certain attributes through their relations to other\nsubjects. That they also _exist_ through similar relations is only an\nideal supposition, not verified to our understanding in these or any\nother concrete cases whatsoever.\n\nIf, however, one were to urge this solemnly, Mr. Haldane's friends could\neasily reply that he only gave us such examples on account of the\nhardness of our hearts. He knew full well their imperfection, but he\nhoped that to those who would not spontaneously ascend to the Notion of\nthe Totality, these cases might prove a spur and suggest and symbolize\nsomething better than themselves. No particular case that can be brought\nforward is a real concrete. They are all abstractions from the Whole,\nand of course the \"through-and-through\" character can not be found in\nthem. Each of them still contains among its elements what we call\n_things_, grammatical subjects, forming a sort of residual _caput\nmortuum_ of Existence after all the relations that figure in the\nexamples have been told off. On this \"existence,\" thinks popular\nphilosophy, things may live on, like the winter bears on their own fat,\nnever entering relations at all, or, if entering them, entering an\nentirely different set of them from those treated of in Mr. Haldane's\nexamples. Thus _if_ the digitalis were to weaken instead of\nstrengthening the heart, and to produce death (as sometimes happens), it\nwould determine itself, through determining the organism, to the\nfunction of \"kill\" instead of that of \"cure.\" The function and relation\nseem adventitious, depending on what kind of a heart the digitalis gets\nhold of, the digitalis and the heart being facts external and, so to\nspeak, accidental to each other. But this popular view, Mr. Haldane's\nfriends will continue, is an illusion. What seems to us the \"existence\"\nof digitalis and heart outside of the relations of killing or curing, is\nbut a function in a wider system of relations, of which, _pro hac vice_,\nwe take no account. The larger system determines the _existence_ just\nas absolutely as the system \"kill,\" or the system \"cure,\" determined the\n_function_ of the digitalis. Ascend to the absolute system, instead of\nbiding with these relative and partial ones, and you shall see that the\nlaw of through-and-throughness must and does obtain.\n\nOf course, this argument is entirely reasonable, and debars us\ncompletely from chopping logic about the concrete examples Mr. Haldane\nhas chosen. It is not his fault if his categories are so fine an\ninstrument that nothing but the sum total of things can be taken to show\nus the manner of their use. It is simply our misfortune that he has not\nthe sum total of things to show it by. Let us fall back from all\nconcrete attempts and see what we can do with his notion of\nthrough-and-throughness, avowedly taken _in abstracto_. In abstract\nsystems the \"through-and-through\" Ideal is realized on every hand. In\nany system, as such, the members are only _members_ in the system.\nAbolish the system and you abolish its members, for you have conceived\nthem through no other property than the abstract one of membership.\nNeither rightness nor leftness, except through bi-laterality. Neither\nmortgager nor mortgagee, except through mortgage. The logic of these\ncases is this:--_If_ A, then B; but _if_ B, then A: wherefore _if_\neither, Both; and if not Both, Nothing.\n\nIt costs nothing, not even a mental effort, to admit that the absolute\ntotality of things _may_ be organized exactly after the pattern of one\nof these \"through-and-through\" abstractions. In fact, it is the\npleasantest and freest of mental movements. Husband makes, and is made\nby, wife, through marriage; one makes other, by being itself other;\neverything self-created through its opposite--you go round like a\nsquirrel in a cage. But if you stop and reflect upon what you are about,\nyou lay bare the exact point at issue between common sense and the\n\"through-and-through\" school.\n\nWhat, in fact, is the logic of these abstract systems? It is, as we said\nabove: If any Member, then the Whole System; if not the Whole System,\nthen Nothing. But how can Logic possibly do anything more with these\ntwo hypotheses than combine them into the single disjunctive\nproposition--\"Either this Whole System, just as it stands, or Nothing at\nall.\" Is not that disjunction the ultimate word of Logic in the matter,\nand can any disjunction, as such, resolve _itself_? It may be that Mr.\nHaldane sees how one horn, the concept of the Whole System, carries real\nexistence with it. But if he has been as unsuccessful as I in\nassimilating the Hegelian re-editings of the Anselmian proof,[143] he\nwill have to say that though Logic may determine _what_ the system must\nbe, _if_ it is, something else than Logic must tell us _that_ it is. Mr.\nHaldane in this case would probably consciously, or unconsciously, make\nan appeal to Fact: the disjunction _is_ decided, since nobody can\ndispute that now, as a matter of fact, _something_, and not nothing,\n_is_. We must _therefore_, he would probably say, go on to admit the\nWhole System in the desiderated sense. Is not then the validity of the\nAnselmian proof the nucleus of the whole question between Logic and\nFact? Ought not the efforts of Mr. Haldane and his friends to be\nprincipally devoted to its elucidation? Is it not the real door of\nseparation between Empiricism and Rationalism? And if the Rationalists\nleave that door for a moment off its hinges, can any power keep that\nabstract, opaque, unmediated, external, irrational, and irresponsible\nmonster, known to the vulgar as bare Fact, from getting in and\ncontaminating the whole sanctuary with his presence? Can anything\nprevent Faust from changing \"Am Anfang war das Wort\" into \"Am Anfang war\ndie That?\"\n\nNothing in earth or heaven. Only the Anselmian proof can keep Fact out\nof philosophy. The question, \"Shall Fact be recognized as an ultimate\nprinciple?\" is the whole issue between the Rationalists and the\nEmpiricism of vulgar thought.\n\nOf course, if so recognized, Fact sets a limit to the\n\"through-and-through\" character of the world's rationality. That\nrationality might then mediate between all the members of our\nconception of the world, but not between the conception itself and\nreality. Reality would have to be given, not by Reason, but by Fact.\nFact holds out blankly, brutally and blindly, against that universal\ndeliquescence of everything into logical relations which the Absolutist\nLogic demands, and it is the only thing that does hold out. Hence the\nire of the Absolutist Logic--hence its non-recognition, its 'cutting' of\nFact.\n\nThe reasons it gives for the 'cutting' are that Fact is speechless, a\nmere word for the negation of thought, a vacuous unknowability, a\ndog-in-the-manger, in truth, which having no rights of its own, can find\nnothing else to do than to keep its betters out of theirs.\n\nThere are two points involved here: first the claim that certain things\nhave rights that are absolute, ubiquitous and all pervasive, and in\nregard to which nothing else can possibly exist in its _own_ right; and\nsecond that anything that denies _this_ assertion is _pure_ negativity\nwith no positive context whatsoever.\n\nTake the latter point first. Is it true that what is negative in one way\nis thereby convicted of incapacity to be positive in any other way? The\nword \"Fact\" is like the word \"Accident,\" like the word \"Absolute\"\nitself. They all have their negative connotation. In truth, their whole\nconnotation is negative and relative. All it says is that, whatever the\nthing may be that is denoted by the words, _other_ things do not control\nit. Where fact, where accident is, they must be silent, it alone can\nspeak. But that does not prevent its speaking as loudly as you please,\nin its own tongue. It may have an inward life, self-transparent and\nactive in the maximum degree. An indeterminate future volition on my\npart, for example, would be a strict accident as far as my present self\nis concerned. But that could not prevent it, _in the moment in which it\noccurred_, from being possibly the most intensely living and luminous\nexperience I ever had. Its quality of being a brute fact _ab extra_ says\nnothing whatever as to its inwardness. It simply says to _outsiders_:\n'Hands off!'\n\nAnd this brings us back to the first point of the Absolutist indictment\nof Fact. Is that point really anything more than a fantastic dislike to\nletting _anything_ say 'Hands off'? What else explains the contempt the\nAbsolutist authors exhibit for a freedom defined simply on its\n\"negative\" side, as freedom \"from,\" etc.? What else prompts them to\nderide such freedom? But, dislike for dislike, who shall decide? Why is\nnot their dislike at having me \"from\" them, entirely on a par with mine\nat having them \"through\" me?\n\nI know very well that in talking of dislikes to those who never mention\nthem, I am doing a very coarse thing, and making a sort of intellectual\nOrson of myself. But, for the life of me, I can not help it, because I\nfeel sure that likes and dislikes _must_ be among the ultimate factors\nof their philosophy as well as of mine. Would they but admit it! How\nsweetly we then could hold converse together! There is something finite\nabout us both, as we now stand. We do not know the Absolute Whole _yet_.\n_Part_ of it is still negative to us. Among the _whats_ of it still\nstalks a mob of opaque _thats_, without which we cannot think. But just\nas I admit that this is all possibly provisional, that even the\nAnselmian proof may come out all right, and creation _may_ be a rational\nsystem through-and-through, why might they not also admit that it may\nall be otherwise, and that the shadow, the opacity, the negativity, the\n\"from\"-ness, the plurality that is ultimate, _may_ never be wholly\ndriven from the scene. We should both then be avowedly making\nhypotheses, playing with Ideals. Ah! Why is the notion of hypothesis so\nabhorrent to the Hegelian mind?\n\nAnd once down on our common level of hypothesis, we might then admit\nscepticism, since the Whole is not yet revealed, to be the soundest\n_logical_ position. But since we are in the main not sceptics, we might\ngo on and frankly confess to each other the motives for our several\nfaiths. I frankly confess mine--I can not but think that at bottom they\nare of an aesthetic and not of a logical sort. The \"through-and-through\"\nuniverse seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable\nall-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations,\nwith no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with\nno reserved rights, or rather as if I had to live in a large seaside\nboarding-house with no private bed-room in which I might take refuge\nfrom the society of the place. I am distinctly aware, moreover, that the\nold quarrel of sinner and pharisee has something to do with the matter.\nCertainly, to my personal knowledge, all Hegelians are not prigs, but I\nsomehow feel as if all prigs ought to end, if developed, by becoming\nHegelians. There is a story of two clergymen asked by mistake to conduct\nthe same funeral. One came first and had got no farther than \"I am the\nResurrection and the Life,\" when the other entered. \"_I_ am the\nResurrection and the Life,\" cried the latter. The \"through-and-through\"\nphilosophy, as it actually exists, reminds many of us of that clergyman.\nIt seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to\nspeak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread\nabysses and its unknown tides. The \"freedom\" _we_ want to see there is\nnot the freedom, with a string tied to its leg and warranted not to fly\naway, of that philosophy. \"Let it fly away,\" we say, \"from _us_! What\nthen?\"\n\nAgain, I know I am exhibiting my mental grossness. But again, _Ich kann\nnicht anders._ I show my feelings; why _will_ they not show theirs? I\nknow they _have_ a personal feeling about the through-and-through\nuniverse, which is entirely different from mine, and which I should very\nlikely be much the better for gaining if they would only show me how.\nTheir persistence in telling me that feeling has nothing to do with the\nquestion, that it is a pure matter of absolute reason, keeps me for ever\nout of the pale. Still seeing a _that_ in things which Logic does not\nexpel, the most I can do is to _aspire_ to the expulsion. At present I\ndo not even aspire. Aspiration is a feeling. What can kindle feeling but\nthe example of feeling? And if the Hegelians _will_ refuse to set an\nexample, what can they expect the rest of us to do? To speak more\nseriously, the one _fundamental_ quarrel Empiricism has with Absolutism\nis over this repudiation by Absolutism of the personal and aesthetic\nfactor in the construction of philosophy. That we all of us have\nfeelings, Empiricism feels quite sure. That they may be as prophetic and\nanticipatory of truth as anything else we have, and some of them more so\nthan others, can not possibly be denied. But what hope is there of\nsquaring and settling opinions unless Absolutism will hold parley on\nthis common ground; and will admit that all philosophies are hypotheses,\nto which all our faculties, emotional as well as logical, help us, and\nthe truest of which will at the final integration of things be found in\npossession of the men whose faculties on the whole had the best divining\npower?\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[140] [Reprinted from _Mind_, vol. IX, No. 34, April, 1884.]\n\n[141] [In 1884.]\n\n[142] [\"Life and Mechanism,\" _Mind_, vol. IX, 1884.]\n\n[143] [_Cf._ P. Janet and G. Seailles: _History of the Problems of\nPhilosophy_, trans. by Monahan, vol. II, pp. 275-278; 305-307. ED.]\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n ABSOLUTE IDEALISM: 46, 60, 99,\n 102, 134, 195, 256 ff., Essay XII.\n\n ACTIVITY: x, Essay VI.\n\n AFFECTIONAL FACTS: 34 ff., Essay\n V, 217 ff.\n\n AGNOSTICISM: 195.\n\n APPRECIATIONS. _See_ AFFECTIONAL\n FACTS.\n\n\n BERGSON, H.: 156, 188.\n\n BERKELEY: 10-11, 43, 76, 77, 212,\n 232.\n\n BODE, B. H.: 234 ff.\n\n BODY: 78, 84 ff., 153, 221.\n\n BRADLEY, F. H.: 60, 98, 99, 100,\n 107 ff., 157, 162.\n\n\n CAUSE: 163, 174, 181 ff.\n\n CHANGE: 161.\n\n COGNITIVE RELATION: 52 ff. _See\n also_ under KNOWLEDGE.\n\n CONCEPTS: 15 ff., 22, 33, 54 ff.,\n 65 ff.\n\n CONJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 44 ff.,\n 59, 70, 94, 104, 107 ff., 117 ff.,\n 163, 240.\n\n CONSCIOUSNESS: xi, Essay I, 75,\n 80, 127 ff., 139 ff., 154, 184, Essay\n VIII.\n\n CONTINUITY: 48 ff., 59, 70, 94.\n\n\n DEMOCRITUS: 11.\n\n DESCARTES: 30.\n\n DEWEY, J.: 53, 156, 191, 204, 247,\n 260.\n\n DISJUNCTIVE RELATIONS: x, 42 ff.,\n 105, 107 ff.\n\n DUALISM: 10, 207 ff., 225, 257.\n\n\n EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii-xiii, 41, 46-47,\n Essay XII. _See also_ under\n RADICAL EMPIRICISM.\n\n EPISTEMOLOGY: 239. _See also_ under\n KNOWLEDGE.\n\n ETHICS: 194.\n\n EXPERIENCE: vii, xii, 8 ff., 53, 62,\n ff., 71, 80, 87, 92, 216, 224, 233,\n 242, 243. _See also_ under PURE\n EXPERIENCE.\n\n EXTERNAL RELATIONS: 110 ff. _See\n also_ under RELATIONS, and\n DISJUNCTIVE.\n\n\n FEELING. _See_ under AFFECTIONAL\n FACTS.\n\n FREE WILL: 185.\n\n\n HALDANE, J. S.: 266 ff.\n\n HEGEL: 106, 276, 277.\n\n HERBART: 106.\n\n HOBHOUSE, L. T.: 109.\n\n HODDER, A. L.: 22, 109.\n\n HODGSON, S.: ix, 48.\n\n HOEFFDING, H.: 238.\n\n HUMANISM: 90, 156, Essay VII,\n Essay XI.\n\n HUME: x, 42, 43, 103, 174.\n\n\n IDEALISM: 39, 40, 134, 219, 241,\n 256.\n\n IDEAS: 55 ff., 73, 177, 209.\n\n IDENTITY, Philosophy of: 134,\n 197, 202.\n\n INDETERMINISM: 90, 274.\n\n INTELLECT: 97 ff.\n\n\n JOSEPH, H. W. B.: 203, 244 ff.\n\n\n KANT: 1, 37, 162, 206.\n\n KIERKEGAARD: 238.\n\n KNOWLEDGE: 4, 25, 56 ff., 68 ff.,\n 87-88, 196 ff., 231. _See also_ under\n COGNITIVE RELATION, OBJECTIVE\n REFERENCE.\n\n\n LIFE: 87, 161.\n\n LOCKE: 10.\n\n LOGIC: 269 ff.\n\n LOTZE: 59, 75, 167.\n\n\n MATERIALISM: 179, 232.\n\n MILL, J. S.: x, 43, 76.\n\n MILL, JAMES: 43.\n\n MILLER, D.: 54.\n\n MINDS, their Conterminousness:\n 76 ff., Essay IV.\n\n MONISM: vii, 208, 267 ff.\n\n MOORE, G. E.: 6-7.\n\n MUENSTERBERG, H.: 1, 18-20, 158.\n\n\n NATORP, P.: 1, 7-8.\n\n NATURALISM: 96.\n\n NEO-KANTISM: 5-6.\n\n\n OBJECTIVE REFERENCE: 67 ff.\n\n OBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 79.\n\n\n PANPSYCHISM: 89, 188.\n\n PARALLELISM: 210.\n\n PERCEPTION: 11 ff., 17, 33, 65, 78,\n 82 ff., 197, 200, 211 ff.\n\n PERRY, R. B.: 24.\n\n PHYSICAL REALITY: 14, 22, 32, 124\n ff., 139 ff., 149 ff., 154, 211 ff.,\n 229, 235.\n\n PITKIN, W. B.: 241 ff.\n\n PLURALISM: 89, 90, 110.\n\n PRAGMATISM: iv, x, xi-xii, 11, 72,\n 97 ff., 156, 159, 176, 242, 261.\n\n PRIMARY QUALITIES: 147.\n\n PRINCE, M.: 88.\n\n PRINGLE-PATTISON, A. S.: 109.\n\n PSYCHOLOGY: 206, 209 ff.\n\n PURE EXPERIENCE: 4, 23, 26-27,\n 35, Essay II, 74, 90, 93 ff., 96.\n 121, 123, 134, 135, 138, 139, 160,\n 193, 200, 226 ff., 257.\n\n\n RADICAL EMPIRICISM: iv-v, vii,\n ix-xiii, 41 ff., 47, 48, 69, 76, 89,\n 91, 107, 109, 121, 148, 156, 159,\n 182, 235, 237, 238, 239, 241, 242.\n\n RATIONALISM: 41, 96 ff., 237, 266.\n\n REALISM: 16, 40, 76, 82 ff.\n\n REHMKE, J.: 1.\n\n RELATIONS: x, 16, 25, 42 ff., 71, 81,\n Essay III, 148, 268. _See also_ under\n CONJUNCTIVE and DISJUNCTIVE.\n\n RELIGION: xiii, 194.\n\n RENOUVIER: 184-185.\n\n REPRESENTATION: 61, 196 ff., 212\n ff. _See also_ under SUBSTITUTION.\n\n ROYCE, J.: 21, 158, 186-187, 195.\n\n\n SANTAYANA, G.: 143, 218.\n\n SCHILLER, F. C. S.: 109, 191, 204,\n 249, 260.\n\n SCHUBERT-SOLDERN, R. V.: 2.\n\n SCHUPPE, W.: 1.\n\n SECONDARY QUALITIES: 146, 219.\n\n SELF: 45, 46, 94, 128 ff.\n\n SENSATION: 30, 201.\n\n SIDIS, B.: 144.\n\n SOLIPSISM: Essay IX.\n\n SPACE: 30-31, 84, 94, 110, 114.\n\n SPENCER, H.: 144.\n\n SPINOZA: 208.\n\n SPIR, A.: 106.\n\n STOUT, G. F.: 109, 158.\n\n STRONG, C. A.: 54, 88, 89, 188.\n\n SUBJECTIVITY: 23 ff., 234 ff., 251 ff.\n\n SUBSTITUTION: 62 ff., 104, 201.\n\n\n TAINE: 20, 62.\n\n TAYLOR, A. E.: 111.\n\n TELEOLOGY: 179.\n\n THINGS: 1, 9 ff., 28 ff., 37, Essay\n III, 209.\n\n THOUGHT: 1, 22, 28 ff., 37, 213.\n _See also_ under KNOWLEDGE.\n\n TIME: 27, 94.\n\n TRANSCENDENTALISM: 39, 52, 67,\n 71, 75, 239.\n\n TRUTH: 24, 98, 192, 202 ff., 247 ff.\n\n\n WARD, J.: 157, 162.\n\n WILL: 165, 184.\n\n WOODBRIDGE. F. J. E.: 196.\n\n WORTH: 186-187.\n\n WUNDT, W.: 152.\n\nThe Riverside Press\n\n\n PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON & CO.\n CAMBRIDGE, MASS.\n U. S. A.\n\n\n\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe following changes were made to the text.\n\n Page 98:\n Yet when so broken it is less consistent then ever.\n Changed to\n Yet when so broken it is less consistent than ever.\n\n Page 180:\n some comtemptibly small process on which success depends.\n Changed to\n some contemptibly small process on which success depends.\n\n Note 93:\n XXV aud XXVI\n Changed to\n XXV and XXVI\n\n Note 101:\n 'Does Consciousuess Exist?'\n Changed to\n 'Does Consciousness Exist?'\n\n Note 109:\n either as a syuonym for 'radical empiricism'\n Changed to\n either as a synonym for 'radical empiricism'\n\n Note 109:\n For other discussions of 'humauism,'\n Changed to\n For other discussions of 'humanism,'\n\n Note 130:\n 'Humanism and Truth' first appeared iu\n Changed to\n 'Humanism and Truth' first appeared in","title":"Essays in Radical Empiricism","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":54835}